Is AI The Next Stage Of Human Evolution? - Robert Wright
In a Nutshell
Robert Wright argues AI represents a threshold evolutionary leap that will destabilize society through job displacement, geopolitical competition, and coordination failures, making near-term global risks far more pressing than speculative sci-fi doom scenarios. He contends that intelligence alone is neutral on benevolence, so ensuring AI-human relations remain nonzero-sum requires deliberate incentive design rather than assuming emergent care for humanity. The decisive factor for a positive outcome is a moral upgrade—cultivating cognitive empathy, objectivity, and international cooperation—to navigate this technology as a unified global community instead of fragmented rivals.
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Robert Wright's book The Moral Animal focused on the human mind and moral biases including self-serving moral biases where people think they are right and others are wrong. AI is an extension of evolutionary thinking in multiple senses. AI is a product of evolution and continues to evolve. The connection to The Moral Animal involves AI performing tasks traditionally done only by human minds, and addressing the psychology of tribalism to navigate the AI revolution successfully.
The central question is whether AI technology, which holds potential for great wonders, is also terrifying and could go badly if not approached wisely. The answer is yes. Three potential futures were outlined in a Financial Times graph: everything getting blown up, exponential growth never seen before, or a 0.2% increase in GDP per year. AI has potential to massively increase GDP but also to destabilize the world or prevent that growth from materializing.
Wright is agnostic about sci-fi doom scenarios such as AI taking over and deciding it has no use for humans, but he takes them more seriously after his research than before. He is more confident that AI will be an earthquake destabilizing the world along multiple dimensions, requiring careful approach. Wright tends to focus on potential downsides of things by nature. Fifteen years ago he had Eliezer Yudkowsky on his podcast during Yudkowsky's transition from singularity optimist to doomer. At that time Wright was not persuaded by arguments that intelligence has a will to power due to evolutionary history.
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