The Dark Path to Eternal Life: Machiavellianism Predicts Approval of Mind Upload Technology

Abstract

Mind upload (MU), making a digital copy of one’s brain, is a part of the ultimate transhumanistic dream leading to eternal life and end of suffering and it is considered as one possible route for creating an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). However, AI Safety Research has pointed to one major risk in creating AGI by MU. Depending on the route that is taken towards the AGIs, it is possible that the person whose brain gets uploaded first could be a psychopath or a selfish individual who wishes to use this technology for personal gain. We studied if peoples acceptance of MU is associated with their individual differences in Dark Triad traits (Machiavellianism & psychopathy), sexual disgust sensitivity, and high-conflict utilitarian judgments. We show with Structural Equation Modelling for the first time that 1) Machiavellianism is associated with positive approval of Mind Upload directly and 2) indirectly through Utilitarianism. Results suggest that the perceived risk of Machiavellians (trait related to psychopathy) preferring MU should be taken seriously.

Treatments Approved, Boosts Eschewed: Moral Limits of Neurotechnological Enhancement

“…These findings resonate with recent studies by Laakasuo et al (2017Laakasuo et al ( , 2018. Laakasuo and colleagues (2017) find that sexual disgust is associated with deontological (as opposed to utilitarian) preferences in solving moral dilemmas; and (2018) that people who endorse the binding moral foundations and are prone to sexual disgust disapprove of another transhuman technology, that of mind upload (see also Laakasuo et al, 2020).…”

“…Schaich Borg et al, 2008;Haidt et al, 1997), and individual differences in disgust sensitivity are associated with self-placement on the liberal-conservative ideological continuum (Inbar et al, 2012). There is also evidence that sexual disgust specifically (see Tybur et al, 2009) predicts disapproval of transhumanist technologies like mind uploading (Laakasuo et al, 2018;Laakasuo et al, 2020). Why individual differences in disgust proneness would be associated with moral evaluations of situations that are not themselves disgust-evoking (see also Laakasuo et al, 2017) is still poorly understood; but such empirical connections may ultimately help develop a more cohesive theory of moral cognition.…”