This neglect is strange, because Darwinian selection is a proven mechanism for producing selfish and aggressive creatures, and is known to be perfectly substrate-neutral: it works in silico just as well as in carbon. The argument from instrumental convergence, by contrast, rests on contested assumptions about how cognition and motivation are coupled.<\/p>\n
Last year I published a paper<\/a> on evolutionary scenarios of AI doom in Philosophical Studies, together with the philosopher Simon Friederich<\/a>. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The selfish machine? On the power and limitation of natural selection to understand the development of advanced AI – Philosophical Studies<\/p>\n Some philosophers and machine learning experts have speculated that superintelligent Artificial Intelligences (AIs), if and when they arrive on the scene, will wrestle away power from humans, with potentially catastrophic consequences. Dan Hendrycks has recently buttressed such worries by arguing that AI systems will undergo evolution by natural selection, which will endow them with instinctive drives for self-preservation, dominance and resource accumulation that are typical of evolved creatures. In this paper, we argue that this argument is not compelling as it stands. Evolutionary processes, as we point out, can be more or less Darwinian along a number of dimensions. Making use of Peter Godfrey-Smith\u2019s framework of Darwinian spaces, we argue that the more evolution is top-down, directed and driven by intelligent agency, the less paradigmatically Darwinian it becomes. We then apply the concept of \u201cdomestication\u201d to AI evolution, which, although theoretically satisfying the minimal definition of natural selection, is channeled through the minds of fore-sighted and intelligent agents, based on selection criteria desirable to them (which could be traits like docility, obedience and non-aggression). In the presence of such intelligent planning, it is not clear that selection of AIs, even selection in a competitive and ruthless market environment, will end up favoring \u201cselfish\u201d traits. In the end, however, we do agree with Hendrycks\u2019 conditionally: If superintelligent AIs end up \u201cgoing feral\u201d and competing in a truly Darwinian fashion, reproducing autonomously and without human supervision, this could pose a grave danger to human societies.<\/p>\n This was largely in response to a seminal paper by the AI safety researcher Dan Hendrycks with the disturbing title \u201cNatural Selection Favors AI over Humans\u201d. Now three heavyweights in evolutionary biology and AI are weighing in with an important new paper<\/a> in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n E\u00f6rs Szathm\u00e1ry is a Hungarian theoretical biologist who wrote The Major Transitions in Evolution with the late John Maynard Smith. Viktor M\u00fcller is a fellow Hungarian who studies virus evolution at E\u00f6tv\u00f6s Lor\u00e1nd University in Budapest. Luc Steels is a Belgian AI researcher who founded the Artificial Intelligence Lab<\/a> at the VUB Brussels University. M\u00fcller, Steels, and Szathm\u00e1ry agree with Friederich and me that the debate about AI risk would benefit from a healthy injection of evolutionary thinking, and that it is still too narrowly focused on the somewhat arbitrary threshold of human-level intelligence, as captured in concepts like \u201csuperintelligence\u201d or \u201cAGI\u201d. As they put it, \u201cbiology holds clues that [evolvable AI] might pose risks long before it would evolve to that point\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From Turing to GPTs: Evolution of AI Intelligence Tests<\/p>\n The hyperbole surrounding AGI misrepresents the capabilities of current AI systems and distracts attention from the real threats that these systems are creating.<\/p>\n That AIs evolve through some form of selection does not, by itself, imply that they will become selfish or dangerous. Everything depends on the selection pressures and on who controls reproduction. M\u00fcller, Steels, and Szathm\u00e1ry appear to agree, making a conceptual move similar to the one Friederich and I drew between domestication and blind evolution. They distinguish between breeder scenarios, where humans impose selection criteria and control reproduction, and ecosystem scenarios, where selection emerges spontaneously in open environments without human control.<\/p>\n This article is for subscribers on the Quillette Member and Quillette VIP Member tiers only.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/11098.png\")
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<\/a>Breeding versus ferality<\/p>\n
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