Introduction

I think reprogenetics (human germline genomic engineering) can be done in a widely acceptable and beneficial way, and should be pursued aggressively. In particular, as a strong background motivation of mine, I think accelerating strong reprogenetics is probably the best way to enable strong human intelligence amplification; and I think strong HIA is among the best ways to decrease existential risk from AGI.

A very common objection to caring much about reprogenetics is that AGI seems very likely to come soon—say, within a decade or two. (Here I mean "actual" AGI—the kind that probably doesn't already exist—the kind that has fluid intelligence and AI advantages for recursive self-improvement, which together make it likely to take over the world shortly after being created.) The objection is fairly straightforward:

AGI will probably come within a decade or two. If that's going to happen, then even if a new cohort of brilliant humans were born today, they would still be children, or would at best have barely begun contributing ideas for how to avoid extinction. Any supposed benefit, denominated in percentage points of AGI existential risk averted, is small. Therefore, reprogenetics is too slow; and if you're going [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) Introduction

(03:37) HIA, part of your nutritionally complete portfolio

(05:52) Against confident short timelines

(08:29) HIA may indirectly slow down AGI capabilities

(09:31) HIA has substantial impact even with short timelines

(16:10) Adult HIA methods aren't fast either, absent big investment

(27:35) Takeaways

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First published:
August 8th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iQzxxgJXXaAQjq7Jz/faq-isn-t-agi-coming-too-soon-for-reprogenetics-to-help

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.