The philosopher Thomas Metzinger suggests a thought experiment called Benevolent Artificial Anti-Natalism (BAAN), in which a full-blown autonomously self-optimizing post biotic superintelligence system has come into existence, aimed to assist humanity with ethical decisions. The superintelligence system is benevolent and fundamentally altruistic, so it fully respects humans’ interests and the axiology originally gave to it. The system has a better understanding of humans’ minds and values than humans themselves have, for example, it is familiar with humans’ cognitive biases which disturb and mislead their rational thinking. In Metzinger’s words:

“Empirically, it knows that the phenomenal states of all sentient beings which emerged on this planet—if viewed from an objective, impartial perspective—are much more frequently characterized by subjective qualities of suffering and frustrated preferences than these beings would ever be able to discover themselves. Being the best scientist that has ever existed, it also knows the evolutionary mechanisms of self-deception built into the nervous systems of all conscious creatures on Earth. It correctly concludes that human beings are unable to act in their own enlightened, best interest.”

Since the superintelligence system knows that bad is stronger than good, and that biological creatures are almost never able to achieve a positive or even neutral life balance, and that no entity can suffer from its own non-existence, it concludes that non-existence is in the own best interest of all future self-conscious beings on this planet. “Empirically, it knows that naturally evolved biological creatures are unable to realize this fact because of their firmly anchored existence bias. The superintelligence decides to act benevolently.”

The idea behind this thought experiment is to help humans think about some of the aspects involved in artificial intelligence, as well as serving as a cognitive tool helping to prevent important ethical issues from turning shallow and be affected by biases. Regarding antinatalism, Metzinger argues that: “one of the points behind it is that an evidence-based, rational, and genuinely altruistic form of anti-natalism could evolve in a superior moral agent as a qualitatively new insight.”

However, as smart, elaborated, and efficient as the superintelligence system would be, it is not very likely to help advance antinatalism, for two main reasons, first, since this superintelligence system would be originally designed according to humans’ values which are extremely pro-natalist, there is no reason to believe, even as a thought experiment, that the superintelligence system would infer such unusual and uncommon conclusions.
Second, even if the system would nevertheless infer such conclusions, obviously humans would simply ignore it.
The problem with antinatalism is not that its supporting thinkers are not smart and educated enough, or that people are too perplexed and in need of a more factually authoritative guidance, but that people simply don’t want to accept the antinatalist imperative.

Take an easier ethical imperative such as veganism for example. Veganism is much less violent and oppressive, it is much more sustainable, it is much healthier, and yet…
Veganism is definitely not a matter of lack of knowledge or unconvincing arguments, but a lack of motivation on the side of the offenders.
There are many valid and informative antinatalist arguments, the problem is that there are only few who are ready to listen. I don’t think that the problem is with spokespersons, so I don’t believe that a thought experiment regarding a superintelligence system would help people think about some of the aspects involved in procreation, or serve as a cognitive tool helping to prevent important ethical issues from turning shallow and be affected by biases. Unfortunately, I don’t think it would help even if one day there would actually be a superintelligence system that would really reach the conclusion that the most ethical thing to do is stop procreating.

And that is despite that if the superintelligence system would truly be compassionate, genuinely altruistic, rational, and totally unbiased, then considering the interests of all sentient beings on earth, it is absolutely unquestionable that it would conclude that humans must refrain from procreation. We don’t need a superintelligence system for that conclusion as even in lousy commercial action movies the “bad guys” often argue that humanity is a plague, cancer, a virus and etc. that needs to be destroyed. Humans have never got along with each other. All along history they never stop fighting, looting, killing, raping, destroying everything in their way and everyone they see and can use for their own benefit. They are doing it all along history, with no limits, not even natural ones as they artificially create sentient creatures only to exploit and murder them later. And not only that they almost never miss the chance for harmful actions, they keep inventing new ones. So again, a non-biased superintelligence system shouldn’t even hesitate before concluding that humans must never procreate.

One of the motivations behind this thought experiment is to ignore the noise and to rationally focus only on the empirical data, because cognitive biases such as what Metzinger calls the “existence bias” (humans do almost anything to prolong their existence), interfere with such a process. But why would it be any different when humans would hear the superintelligence system’s conclusion regarding their procreation? Metzinger writes in the article that “sustaining one’s existence is the default goal in almost every case of uncertainty, even if it may violate rationality constraints, simply because it is a biological imperative that has been burned into our nervous systems over millennia.” So there is no reason to believe that the benevolent artificial antinatalism thought experiment, nor the actual existence of a superintelligence system, would make any difference in humans’ unethical behavior.
The problem is not that people don’t know what is right, but that most want what is wrong.
We don’t need technology to help us understand what is right, we need technology to help us implement what is right.

References

Metzinger Thomas Benevolent-Artificial-Anti-Natalism (BAAN) 2017

https://www.edge.org/conversation/thomas_metzinger-benevolent-artificial-anti-natalism-baan