Humans Genetically Engineered To Be Super Intelligent Could Have An IQ Of 1000

Ajai Raj Oct 23, 2014, 5:59 AM - businessinsider.com

Genetically engineered human beings could have IQs of 1000 or higher. At least that's the theory of scientist Stephen Hsu.

Hsu is something of a scientific polymath, who has done work pertaining to quantum physics, dark energy, finance, and information security, as well as genomics and bioinformatics, or the application of computer science and statistics to biological data. He officially holds the title of Vice-President for Research and Graduate Studies at Michigan State, where he is also a professor of Theoretical Physics.

He thinks that by tweaking our genomes, we could make humans drastically smarter. Hsu makes his case in Nautilus — and the implications are as tantalizing as they are terrifying. He's also published the theory in more detail at ArXiv.

1. On the genetic architecture of intelligence and other quantitative traits
2. IQ and Human Intelligence by Robert Plomin

How to make a smarter human

"The possibility of super-intelligence follows directly from the genetic basis of intelligence. Characteristics like height and cognitive ability are controlled by thousands of genes, each of small effect," Hsu writes.

From previous studies of the genome, Hsu says we can estimate that there are probably about 10,000 of these gene variants associated with intelligence. If we can tweak each of these to their "smart" version, so that they contribute a tiny bit to higher intelligence, we could engineer human beings who "exhibit cognitive ability which is roughly 100 standard deviations above average. This corresponds to more than 1,000 IQ points."

Hsu is also a scientific advisor to BGI, formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute, and one of the founders of its Cognitive Genomics Lab. According to rumours that surfaced last year, BGI is currently in the process of sequencing the genomes of 2,000 of the world's smartest people in hopes of carrying out a program like Hsu describes and engineering super-smart babies.

Hsu and BGI aren't the only ones predicting superintelligence through genetic improvements. In his recently published book Super intelligence, Nick Bostrom, founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, agrees that genetics is the key to creating superintelligent humans. By using genetic screening of embryos before implantation, parents could find and select the embryos that possess these "turned-on" alleles for high intelligence.

And with "further advances in genetic technology," Bostrom adds, "it may be possible to synthesize genomes to specification, obviating the need for large pools of embryos."

Bostrom predicts that, "once this technology has matured, an embryo could be designed with the exact preferred combination of genetic inputs from each parent," and "genes that are present in neither of the parents could also be spliced in, including alleles that are present with low frequency in the population but which may have significant positive effects on cognition.

It's not all fun and genome games

What would that mean, exactly? It's almost impossible to fathom. As Hsu points out, the IQ scale devised by our puny human minds might not even mean anything at that level of intelligence. He speculates about the cognitive abilities such super humans would possess:

We can be confident that, whatever it means, ability of this kind would far exceed the maximum ability among the approximately 100 billion total individuals who have ever lived. We can imagine savant-like capabilities that, in a maximal type, might be present all at once: nearly perfect recall of images and language; super-fast thinking and calculation; powerful geometric visualization, even in higher dimensions; the ability to execute multiple analyses or trains of thought in parallel at the same time; the list goes on.

The prospect of such super humans roaming the same planet as us "normals" is, frankly, terrifying. As Hsu writes, "the corresponding ethical issues are complex and deserve serious attention in what may be a relatively short interval before these capabilities become a reality."

He speculates that some countries will make genetic engineering legal before others, and, perhaps obviously, that elites will be the first ones who can avail themselves of the benefits of superintelligence for themselves and their children. But he believes — and we should hope — that access to this kind of technology will become democratized so that everyone can benefit.

As Hsu soberly warns at the end of his article: "The alternative would be inequality of a kind never before experienced in human history."

"Smart Drugs"

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic

The autistic are not the next stage in evolution, any talent exhibited is caused by the rewiring of a damaged brain. The problem we face, gray hair is visible, and its cure cannot be hidden, and it is a trillion dollar patent and product, yet scientists prefer some molecule that has no detectable effect on those that take it, leading us to conclude that current science is less than the entry level proof of age reversal, the curing of gray hair, and these star children may need to be recruited instead of current scientists.

Highest IQ By Nation

These are a random demographic average. These results came under intense citicism as the caucasion races did not racts as highly as they imagine themselves, so it is effectively skewed.

• Japan - 106.49
• Taiwan - 106.47
• Singapore - 105.89
• Hong Kong - 105.37
• Macau - 525, 558, 544
• China - 104.10
• South Korea - 102.35
• Italy - 102.23
• Switzerland - 101.54
• Greece - 96.43

Brains, human beings struggle to cure aging and struggle at many brain challenges. Society, after all, is an expression of IQ and of the average IQ of the population dictates existence. Essentially brains. We all generally suffer from this limitation.

The smartest people and getting the smartest people to do the job. This is the most common way of doing things, process people to identify the smartest and put them to do the challenging work. It is called the education system. Finding the smartest people is possible, but a consideration is that this system is highly flawed by sociology. Is the candidate really the smartest, or just gone through life with privilege and passes. Considering we are genuine about wanting to cure aging, we must take such into account. Find the smartest people, tick and with caveat that many times the smartest people are sidelined, and their talent is unrealized, and we all suffer imposters.

Bona fide genius, they are above the smartest people, and they wear their superior intellect openly, they can be identified. They are a better chance at meeting the goals of science work than the smartest people. Definitely sought to work on biology, medical problems and curing aging. They are also generally easily acquired. They seem to be sidelined most of the time as governments are threatened by such people. Geniuses, in reality, are largely pushed aside, suppressed and denied. Geniuses struggle with self-direction, and working with geniuses means grooming them and guiding them, putting them in your stable and taking care of them.

Because geniuses openly breeze through challenges, one can side step sociology if they are identified early and cared for.

Savants, if you have seen the movie Rain Man, the main character is termed a savant. Savants surpass the smartest people and even bona fide geniuses. They usually have some kind of brain damage that causes them to be exceptional. Autism or acquired savants, an accident to head. The brain damage causes the brain to rewire itself, and the result is the savant. The technology of turning everyone into a savant without brain damage is of ongoing interest. Savants appear to have photographic memory and may not be well suited to solving problems with unknown or even impossible answers in science. However, savants are not to be discounted. A well instructed savant could prove highly valued in a field where peers work with the savant to try different things and are informed on experiments and results that they may not be aware of. A savant would memorize the entire nature journals and bells journals for good measure dating back to 1863 and even tell you the date, title of the paper and reference to each tidbit of information.

Thus far, we have learned of smart people, bona fide geniuses and savants. The common constraint is the human being has the brain, and we have to bring together the human beings that have the brains, of which these three groups are candidates. We are concerned with brain power, and the condition is that it comes with human being.

Artificial Intelligence, we use these brains to build brains, an artificial brain, an intelligence that can surpass human capacity. Artificial Intelligence, if such an A.I. were to do science, everything we thought we knew would not survive A.I. and we are just beginning to build systems with the capacity of being somewhat intelligent. Automatons to a computing machine able to do math computations, exceeding most people ability, to beating world champion in chess, Go and other games. IBM Watson beating Jeopardy champion in trivia facts. Rather than a human being intelligent enough to do some task, we can build machines to do tasks both physical and intellectual and develop them, ongoing, increasing their ability and intelligence with each iteration. Unlike, smart people, bona fide geniuses and savants, building an AI that can surpass these three groups is an ongoing area of research, and we require the superintelligence.

A high quality A.I. breaks the model of needing a human with a brain and its mortality, and we only need to build it once.

While A.I. cannot replace smart people, bona fide geniuses or savants just yet, the best A.I. are able to provide some contribution to assisting scientists, similar to the way savants might with their quick relay of essential information and the ability to answer questions from an information base.

Last year was a great year for A.I. However, it is unclear that a linear pathway towards AGI is achievable. More parameters, higher quality training data, more computing power might not be a pathway towards AGI or artificial superintelligence. But the meticulous process of making A.I. a little better with each iteration and over time should prove a milestone at some iteration, and people are always suggesting novel ways of giving A.I. a little more prospect.

Intelligent Slime, an interesting show of intelligence, was a slime that redesigned the Tokyo subway, doing a better job than humans. Physarum polycephalum, single-celled slime molds, they found, can build networks as complex as the Tokyo subway system. These are plants, easy to keep and maintain, they can be scaled. Translating their ability to play pong better than a human can is another story. Plant neurobiology. The point is the successful harnessing of biology to do something intelligent and, in the case of the slime mold, more intelligent than a human. The largest organism on Earth is a fungus called Armillaria ostoyae, also known as the "honey mushroom." The fungus is found in the Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon, USA, and covers an area of approximately 2,200 acres (8.9 square kilometers). These are under development and far from being usable for any science work.

As we observed in the slime mold. The prospect of biological neuronal network, the brain in a vat. Dish brain, as it is termed, is the latest iteration and the topic we want to explore today, in the search for brain power that can cure aging. The brain in a vat. The brain in a jar. The big neuronal network

Brains are just neurons forming connections. We can't have this 1 chip per neuron shenanigans (joke), we need the big brain... Duplicate the brain and make an infinitely larger version of it with the design that it results in a superintelligence. The process could involve forming an artificial brain, neurons and synapses in a container. New neurons can be added, and the brain made bigger and bigger. But neurons are highly dependent on the life support system and are living...

Some details to consider are...

1. Defining the media, so it can be synthesized and animal free. As the brain gets larger, the amount of media would also increase. Artificial media should be cheap and synthesized, a media recycling system could make things more efficient.
2. Without an immune system, a virus or bacteria could kill the brain. Either an immune system must also be synthesized or the condition must be kept sterile. Generally, developing artificial homeostatic and life support systems are required.
3. Neuron rights, apply the Abraham Maslow, hierarchy of human needs, allow them to rest to 12 hours a day, feed them, so on. We are building a sentience, and building a sentience is not inherently a violation of the sentience rights. A sentient brain could be perfectly happy if all its needs were met.
4. Develop the input and output system to train the neurons and to communicate with the brain. Ideally, like we communicate with humans.

The average total volume of the human brain is approximately 1,200 cubic centimeters. Multiplied by the number of people on Earth say (8 billion), the resulting volume would be approximately 9.6 trillion cubic centimeters, equal to approximately 9,600 cubic meters. 9,600 cubic meters = 30.8 meters by 30.8 meters by 30.8 meters. Basically, all the human brains on Earth would fit into a space, 30.8 meters. The Empire State Building in New York City is by comparison 1.04 million cubic meters vs. 9,600 cubic meters for all the human brains on Earth. It could fit a brain 108 times the size of all the brains of everyone alive today, every human being on Earth.

One needs to think ahead, a monolithic design poses some challenges. What if it breaks, what if you have to move it, what if you want to expand it, make it even bigger. How would a brain that size communicate if the neurons are so spaced apart, magnetic fields? The furthest parts of the brain would lose communication with each other. Synapses and rails would be needed to maintain homogenous connectivity to a bigger and ever bigger brain and does plasticity of the brain play a role, meaning neurons move around and reposition themselves and form bonds. Would that need to be maintained, or is that just energy conservation. It is also important to note that the volume of the brain is not the only factor that determines cognitive abilities and intelligence. The structure and function of the brain, including the number and arrangement of neurons and synapses, the efficiency of communication between neurons, and the organization of brain regions, also play a role in determining cognitive abilities and intelligence.

Possibly, small vats could be interconnected with artificial synapses. These synapses could also provide an electrical superhighway for the entire brain to maintain homogeneity of the brain regardless of size.

The field of Neurorobotics, involves the integration of neural tissue and robotic technology in order to create robots that can exhibit behaviors that are similar to those of living organisms. In neurorobotics, researchers use techniques from neuroscience, engineering, and computer science to design and build robots that are controlled by neural tissue, typically from animals such as rats or monkeys. Instead a "neurocomputer" is sometimes used to refer to a type of computer that is designed to mimic the structure and function of the brain, or to use algorithms or other computational approaches that are inspired by the brain. These two concepts are not what we are eploring here. We are exploring the engineering of a big brain constructed out of neurons. Many, many quadrillions of neurons and synaspes, integrating and thinking as one brain.

The human brain has an estimated 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses (connections between neurons). The spinal cord, which is a long, delicate tube of nerve tissue that runs from the brain down through the center of the back, contains a smaller number of neurons, but is still an important part of the nervous system. That is why it is sometimes stated, the humans have two brains. Overall, it is estimated that the human body contains several hundred billion neurons.

What is the all important aim here. Is making brains that build smarter brains, a brain is made with the sole task of building a bigger, smarter brain. The brain that builds a brain and on and on. Then we can use it that brain to work on solving problems, obsoleting healthcare, cure aging.