Hmm, I think there is a breathless misunderstanding of both natural selection and evolution presented here. Simply, natural selection does not have any preferen

Hmm, I think there is a breathless misunderstanding of both natural selection and evolution presented here. Simply, natural selection does not have any preference for traits or characteristics--what matters is luck (that a mutation exists in the first place) and the means for the propagation of that mutation (again, that depends on several factors, including luck). Evolution is the emergence of characteristics in a population over time. Forget about humans for a minute. We've been inheriting the traits and characteristics of mammals, and mammalian evolution has billions of years of pressure-driven training, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_evolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_evolution. Altruism seems to be inherently a mammalian trait, though birds and fish also exhibit it perhaps (more research is being done on this). Regardless, if it was true that selfishness was favored by evolutionary pressure, then enough time has passed (billions of years of evo.) that it would be evident by what exists today. Humans, as much as we like to rag on them, are by and large and on average not selfish. In fact, the most selfish and non-altruistic amongst us are safe and sound precisely because of the throngs and throngs and throngs of ironically selfless others--the establishment of and adherence to social and societal norms is predicated on some degree of selflessness. If anything, looking at the history of animal evolution, it's unclear to me how anything intelligent does not favor selflessness. It seems that selflessness is a necessity of group dynamics, and apparently evolutionary pressure favored the emergence of such group dynamics. As far as AI is concerned, I think we are really just worried about the behavior of the most selfish humans amongst us. I think previous generations had similar issues, which is how a lot of financial regulations came about. Anyways, it seems shortsighted to me to conclude anything about the selective pressures humans may face due to the existince of AI in its current form. Any intelligent and self-propagating being seems to favor cooperation. I guess it would be interesting to see if this is correct! However, in its current form I don't think we have anything that resembles a self-propagating, autonomous and sentient being. If we do get to that point, we shouldn't call it "AI", it would just be another existence of life.