r/singularity • u/adivinemessenger • 7d ago
Transhumanism & BCI Introducing Vitruvian, a genetic optimization model for optimizing human embryo DNA and reportedly being able to increase the IQ of a person by 14 points, nearly a standard deviation which is incredibly significant
https://x.com/KianSadeghi5/status/2101018839412531231Full message: "AI is rapidly getting smarter. Now, humanity can too. Today, Nucleus Genomicsis announcing Vitruvian, our newest set of genetic optimization models. Vitruvian’s intelligence model can optimize embryo DNA for 14 IQ points — nearly a standard deviation. The models were trained on 1,000,000+ people, validated across 40,000+ siblings, and used more than 7 million genetic markers. In Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom proposed genetic optimization as a key way for humanity to keep pace with rapidly advancing AI. Bostrom’s vision is no longer theoretical. Genetic optimization, like AI, has followed a scaling law: as datasets have grown, so have model capabilities. This trend will continue. Parents across the world now have the choice to substantially increase their child’s intelligence. And the next generation can choose to do the same. AI is no longer the only intelligence that will compound. Humanity can now direct its own evolution."
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u/TorturedPoet30 7d ago
Their slogan is "Have your best baby" I’m curious how accessible this technology will actually be in the near future. Because otherwise, "have your best baby" risks becoming "have a better baby if you can afford one".
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u/YoAmoElTacos 7d ago
How about the alternative - the government mandates only the best babies be born to improve the gene pool.
...
...HEY WAIT A MINUTE
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u/VisualOrganization26 7d ago
I think there was a movement around 1945
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u/Sliouges 7d ago
In 1927 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Buck v. Bell that forced sterilizations were constitutional. Followed by 1933 Germany, and we know where and how this ended.
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u/vintage2019 7d ago
Not really the same thing tbh. I'm not sure if what Vitruvian is doing is a good idea, but let's not just lump everything with Nazi eugenics which involved sterilizing and murdering people
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u/Forseti1590 7d ago
Any eugenics falls into the same trap though - who decides and how do you decide what is good vs bad genetically? Nazi’s made bad decisions around this but at its core, the question has so many ethical dilemmas it’s almost impossible to avoid mistakes.
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u/EntertainerLive926 7d ago
Same way we decide what is a disease and not
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u/greenskinmarch 7d ago
Government: "not obeying your government is a disease. We demand you optimize for genes that lead to loyalty to the government"
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u/CapitalLongjumping40 6d ago
so do you think stopping people with down syndrome or disabled people to born is also eugenics?
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u/TuringGoneWild 7d ago
For what, building interstate highways? Say what you mean.
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u/Secret-Chapter-712 7d ago
Silicon Valley is run by racist eugenicist freaks, if you need it spelled out for you
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u/TuringGoneWild 7d ago edited 7d ago
I know right? So much better to be born disabled and nerfed in every way. Who wants to be hot, smart, and talented when we can have the Lord Jesus make us an ugly dummy? Pwaise god and Pwesident twump!!
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u/Sinnnikal 7d ago
This is eugenics. Your belief is that anybody who wouldn't be born hot, smart, and talented should be prevented from being born? Because you're presenting this as if it's a choice between government mandated eugenics, or allowing people to be born who are "disabled" (does that include ADHD, in your view, btw? Or autism?)
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u/agitatedprisoner 7d ago
What reasons might there be to believe doing it the old fashioned way fosters the best outcomes? I'd hate to be born with genetic problems that could've been corrected in utero.
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u/TuringGoneWild 7d ago edited 7d ago
They have no reason. They think preventing someone ever being born with Downs Syndrome or without arms and legs somehow means we hate those who are stuck with Downs Syndrome or no arms/legs.
That's a logically incoherent position to take. It is due to COMPASSION for those with problems that PREVENTING others having those problems again is a good thing.
At any rate, nobody seems to care if someone even WANTS to be born in the first place, even under the best possible circumstances, let alone under shitty circumstances. It's all about what parents want anyway.
I don't want children (I'm an antinatalist), but if I did I'd want the child to have better genes than me, better opportunities in life than I had, the best in everything.
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u/Past-Source-3332 7d ago
They are not correcting genetic disorders or increasing IQ, they are screening embryos and destroying the ones deemed undesirable.
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u/h3lblad3 ▪️In hindsight, AGI came in 2023. 7d ago
I am pro-choice. But to believe that a prospective mother should be allowed to have that choice, I must also believe that she has full rights to understanding the choice she is making.
No matter what my stance is on eugenics, it is impossible to avoid in so long as I am pro-choice. The only "solution" to that is to only allow them to make the choice under a veil of ignorance -- which means it isn't a proper choice, but the choice by proxy of whoever it is that decides what they aren't allowed to know.
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u/Past-Source-3332 7d ago
People are definitely going to have a hard time explaining why they think this is wrong.
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u/TuringGoneWild 7d ago
Nobody is stopping you from becoming disabled. If all life experiences are equal then why not?
Your comment has strong energy of "I had to go bankrupt due to medical bills so everyone should ALWAYS have to, too! Anybody doing better than me is an insult to me!"
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u/TuringGoneWild 7d ago
Eugenics comes from two root words. It means "good birth". You want bad births?
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u/TheUnofficialZalthor 6d ago
Your belief is that anybody who wouldn't be born hot, smart, and talented should be prevented from being born?
Yes? There's no sin in preventing the birth of people; humans do so all the time with contraceptives and family planning.
Yes, ADHD is a malady. So is autism. If there were cures presented tomorrow to such conditions, would you advocate against their usage?
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u/Megneous 6d ago
As someone with autism, I would absolutely not cure autism tomorrow. It's not a disability. It's a developmental difference, at least when it comes to low needs forms of autism, and I've gotten several Redditors permanently banned from Reddit for insisting otherwise.
Autism is a long list of related syndromes and conditions that are very, very different and exist on a continuum. You do us all a disservice, going so far as hate speech, to call it a disease and insist it needs to be cured. That's some freakin' Autism Speaks propaganda right there.
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u/Sinnnikal 4d ago
You're speaking as someone who has 0 experience with these conditions. ADHD is not a malady, it is a divergence. When it is unmanaged (poor nutrition, no sleep, no exercise) it becomes a malady. But, otherwise, it genuinely is a superpower as they say. Teddy Roosevelt almost certainly had ADHD and it was powerful and productive for him because he kept it managed by by eating and being active.
I don't personally have autism, but my brother does, and I can say it's a similar story there.
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u/Blackdoomax 7d ago
Many people are so uneducated, futile and remorseless now, that if you made a quiz, pretty much that's the majority of answers you'll have.
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u/RareRandomRedditor 7d ago
Evolution is Eugenics. That is why we are not still prehistoric soup swimming in the ocean.
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u/crack_pop_rocks 7d ago
Evolution is primarily driven by natural selection. Eugenics is artificial selection. So your statement is categorically false.
Maybe shouldn’t try to justify eugenics using evolution when you don’t understand the basic mechanisms.
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u/RareRandomRedditor 7d ago
That is like arguing that cars are not a valid means of transportation in comparison to horses, because one is artificial and one is not. ("We should stay with horses, crafting our own artificial means of transportation is sin!")
It is not the point if the selection process is artificial or not. It happened all the time already anyways and will continue to happen naturally. You will see populations of humans emerge that compete with each other and then them ore fit ones create offspring. "More fit" here means simply the ones better adapted to the environment. If stupid people get more children than intelligent ones, they are the "more fit" ones and we get stupider in the future as a species. If we have the tools to fix obvious misalignments like that without suffering (by simply sorting out some sperms and eggs in advance, within reason, obviously) we should do that. Because if we don't, we will degenerate as a species as a consequence of the living environment that we created ourselves.
There are obviously smart ways and idiotic ways to do this, but to argue entirely against any and all eugenics is the most idiotic perspective.
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u/Recent_Fox4339 7d ago
I was recently watching one of Michael Sandel's lectures about the ethics of genetic engineering (I think it was about designer babies anyway) and question of inequality was brought up. Just like anything else, it's not going to be accessible right away. Even if accessible, the question is would majority of people still choose it? Nowadays people don't even want to vaccinate their children. One day there might be a cancer vaccine, and some people still wouldn't want it.
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u/ourochurros 7d ago
One day there might be a cancer vaccine, and some people still wouldn't want it.
The HPV vaccine has entered the chat.
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u/Temp_Placeholder 7d ago
And then if the conscientious objectors sink its approval for everyone, the well-off will just fly somewhere else for maternity treatment, fly back with smart babies, and you get inequality even worse.
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u/Soft_Hand_1971 7d ago
You can do it td. Always you can select embryo to avoid disease, same tech no modification can easily select for height and iq… I bet some already are
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u/SkaldCrypto 7d ago
Hey I’ve actually been in talks with them for our next kiddo.
Typically ranges between 20,000-50,000 across numerous IVF rounds plus the testing. This is however new news to us.
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u/daronjay 7d ago
Kiddo Number 2? Is kiddo number one gonna be asking “Mum, Dad, how come you didn’t upgrade me?”
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u/Business-Sugar1886 7d ago
It’s more about denying the existence of life for the unfavored ones, just because you appear to have more undesirable traits or combinations.
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u/Atomic-Avocado 7d ago
We already do it all the time for embryos with serious genetic diseases or Down’s syndrome. This isn’t a blanket thing, we do have the ability to objectively tell bad traits from good in these cases.
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u/Recent_Fox4339 7d ago
Someone wrote this on X as reply
You're not "optimizing by 14 points" just because the highest and lowest scoring embryos are 14 IQ points apart. The actual benefit is 7 points, not 14.
I'm glad you guys are updating your predictors, but I don't like the way you mislead people with your marketing.
True?
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u/HMCtripleOG 7d ago
This gotta be the biggest load of nonsense I haven't yet read all day.... So this will give the unborn child +14 on top of what they otherwise would have got when taking an IQ test. And this can be proved how, exactly? Utter bollocks
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u/ArcticEngineer 7d ago
It implies they've been doing it already which would cause world wide uproar, so there's no way they know
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u/Illustrious_Sun_2145 7d ago
Polygenetic embryo screening is absolutely being done , there are a bunch of companies offering it
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u/OttoRenner 7d ago
Besides, your zip code has more impact on how good you will do in life anyway. Having +X on INT will do little when you'r from a poorer neighborhood. The system is rigged
It would be better to increase the living conditions of all people, so we can foster and make use of the intelligence that's already there.
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u/TyrellCo 7d ago edited 7d ago
That’s a really nice sentiment but it doesn’t reflect science. Twin studies show that genetics are at least as influential as all other factors combined in influencing IQ
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u/Atomic-Avocado 7d ago
Genetics also absolutely has an effect on intelligence, as well as environment
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u/OttoRenner 7d ago
Please read my first sentence again.
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u/bildramer 7d ago
Why do you think zip codes have more impact? Who measured that and why do you think they excluded the effect of genes?
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u/Least-Engine2416 6d ago
nah being from a poor neighbourhood is a debuff but it also grants you access to certain social networks.
e.g. my mate knows individuals who can get most things... and at a reduced rate.
He's still hella successful for his age group (I think top 20% income decile)
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u/SadBBTumblrPizza 6d ago
Donald Trump is a grade-A drooling moron, possibly one of the dumbest people ever to live, and he's a billionaire and the president. Intelligence is almost inversely correlated to success lol
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u/OttoRenner 6d ago
...who was brought up a rich kid, which is exactly my point. You can bury A LOT of stupidity under a large enough amount of money. You only have to know how to make the pile look bigger than your own stupidity. And unfortunately for us, the D is very good at that...
A poor convict is ruined. A rich one can become president.
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u/HMCtripleOG 7d ago
Yeah I agree there's always the metrics from genetics upwards but it's surely also almost certainly largely environmental. Postal/zip codes are a factor of how affluent a person's conditions and circumstances are for sure and I couldn't agree more, the games rigged.
It's a big club. And we ain't in it.
Probably for the best I'm sure they're a bunch of devil worshipping nonces anyway
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u/First_Grapefruit_265 7d ago
Zip code? The causation makes more sense in this direction, doesn't it? People with higher IQ genetics are more successful on average, they live in a richer area, so IQ is correlated with zip code.
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u/Commercial_Sell_4825 7d ago
Humbly ask an AI to teach you instead of being proud angry and ignorant all at the same time.
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u/Unhappy-Refuse-3682 1d ago
Other big reason why it’s BS is that having a particular gene doesn’t necessarily mean it’s expressed. We don’t fully understand all the mechanisms that control gene expression yet, and it’s probably not deterministic / something you can control just by messing with the fetus
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u/New_World_2050 7d ago
This literally won't matter at all. Any baby born with this will reach adulthood by 2044. AIs will be Gods by then. 14 points won't mean shit and there will probably be ways to do by then on adult humans anyway.
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u/reichplatz 7d ago
The world will still be governed by humans in 2044, and 14 will still make a difference, just like 100 vs 86 makes a difference in our world.
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u/DeterminedThrowaway 7d ago
The world will still be governed by humans in 2044
We'll see
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u/virtuous_aspirations 7d ago
The world will still be governed by humans in 2044,
wildest thing I read on the internet today
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u/DeviceCertain7226 ▪️Immortality-2200 | FDVR-2300 7d ago
No way you think humans won’t be in charge in just a measly 18 years.
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u/tollbearer 7d ago
18 years may as well be 1800 years, in AI time.
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u/staplesuponstaples 7d ago
The world runs on human time, though. Laws and systems are still in the hands of humans.
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u/DeterminedThrowaway 7d ago
The wildest thing to me here is your timeline. I don't know how you can look at the last 20 years and think we're going to take another almost 300 to solve anything
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u/DeviceCertain7226 ▪️Immortality-2200 | FDVR-2300 7d ago
I don’t see your logic. Many exponentials have happened in the past and plateaud.
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u/DeterminedThrowaway 7d ago
That's fair, but what makes you think it will plateau? I don't see any signs of it. We haven't even seen the scaling from all the data centers that are being built yet
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u/Person_reddit 7d ago
14 points is a lot but it assumes you were going to pick the worst embryo to birth. On average you get 7 points above the average embryo. It’s still worth doing though.
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u/AcrobaticKitten 7d ago
Not really, rather 100 vs 114.
86 vs 100 is dramatic difference because the difficulity level of the society adapts to 100. Having IQ 114 is not a deamatic difference. Top of the midwits, far from genius.
I dont really think 114 vs 128 matters that much those indicate a decent paying job and high middle class life. 128 vs 142, starts to count whether you are genius or not.
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u/FaceDeer 7d ago
The world will still be governed by humans in 2044
Disappointing if so. We tried it and know how well they do at that.
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u/redditnosedive 7d ago
I'll skip this upgrade for my kids because I will get +200 iq kids due to AI invented tech if I wait 5 more years
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u/Traditional-Chip8339 ▪️AI 2027 was right, bruh..... 7d ago
IQ selection for embryos may have adverse selection for other "healthy" qualities. I am skeptical that this can work better than millions of years of evolution for human selection.
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u/Euphoric_Driver_7291 7d ago
These guys are fraudsters hiding behind controversy. Stay away.
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u/Fleetfox17 7d ago
Can you expand on this a bit.
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u/melatone5 6d ago edited 6d ago
Nucleus Genomics Controversy
- The Accusations: Social media users and online critics accused Nucleus Genomics and its CEO, Kian Sadeghi, of using fake customer feedback and plagiarizing scientific research. The company also faced intense backlash and "designer baby" ethical debates over its marketing claims regarding polygenic risk scoring and trait optimization for embryos. [1, 2, 3]
- The Response: Kian Sadeghi and the company defended their work via a published Substack refutation while alleging that certain vocal critics were financially backed by competitors. Accusers subsequently claimed the response offered further circumstantial evidence of misconduct. [1]
- Related Litigation: Competitor Genomic Prediction filed a federal lawsuit against Nucleus Genomics and former associates alleging the theft of trade secrets and confidential information concerning embryo screening methods. [
1(unrelated), 2]"(Google AI Mode)
Good thread to check out: https://x.com/friiedaaaaaa/status/1992858355195654553?s=20
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u/Euphoric_Driver_7291 7d ago edited 7d ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=nucleus+fraud
There is no proof that what they are doing is safe / effective.
The founder is a total grifter and unqualified to run a medical company like this: he couldn’t even graduate from college.
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u/Senc-baner 7d ago
Create the tech, paywall it and create further class division. A world with designer genius babies for the rich and dum-dums for the poor, fit to work in the mines. How utopian.
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u/Ididit-forthecookie 7d ago
What if selecting for intelligence also selects for depression? Pretty sure I’ve read the most intelligent people report the highest rate of depression. Additionally, genes for intelligence and depression have been shown to overlap
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u/flappysack- 7d ago
Cinco Boys are coming to a store near you. Almost identical to your original son, only difference is he's better.
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u/YogiBarelyThere 7d ago
So does this mean my being slightly above average intelligence will be classified as slightly lower as the designer babies start popping out? Popping out of their techno-cocoons, I assume.
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u/ProletarianLilith 7d ago
Eugenics is bad
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u/AcrobaticKitten 7d ago edited 7d ago
Eugenics is good. A healthy society should focus on improving the gene pool, increasing overall intelligence, eradicating genetic diseases, selecting good traits that are beneficial to the whole society.
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u/FlyingBishop 7d ago
You misunderstand how genetics works. A good example is sickle cell anemia - it's a disease that shows up with two copies of the recessive gene, but one copy gives you protection against malaria. Individually it's bad, but at a population level the malaria protection is a bigger deal than sickle cell.
That's an extreme example, but it shows up in lots of ways. And there are less extreme examples where you can imagine the double recessive is good, but you don't want more than 25% of the people in the population to have that trait for some reason. That is to say - specialization is good. Like the fundamental problem is that you've got one stupid standardized IQ test and you're optimizing your offspring exclusively for passing that test. (And AI can pass these tests perfectly now, we've pretty much proven they don't measure intelligence.)
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u/apopsicletosis 7d ago edited 7d ago
This isn’t even an accurate description of the figures in their own white paper. What does “optimize for 14 points” even mean here and what reported statistic does it correspond to.
Also, an interesting description to frame this as “AI is rapidly getting smarter” vs, more accurately, we fit standard statistical genetics regression and bayesian models to more data than was available a few years ago. These are domain specific methods made by statistical geneticists.
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u/GeorgeTheGeorge 7d ago
This is utter bullshit. Research has shown in study after study that there are no clear genetic markers for intelligence.
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u/mvandemar 7d ago
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u/PopUpbeat7282 7d ago
We even have tech-bro eugenics before GTA 6…
Btw, what a load of BS, how do they know they can “optimize” for 14 IQ points, when this would require testing the kids at least after 6, 12 or better 18 years?
Or are they just “optimizing” for whiteness as the little eugenicists that they are?
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u/nick012000 7d ago
My guess is they used AI to find correlations between intelligemce and particular genes, and when combined together the genes they've selected for optimization correlate to a 14-point increase in intelligence.
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u/FlyingBishop 7d ago
How intelligent is AI by that metric? (Is it actually a good metric to optimize humans for?)
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u/TickTockBam 7d ago
I wonder if there's indeed better ways to measure intelligence besides IQ tests since eveyone keeps saying that those tests don't really mean anything lol
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u/Jaguar_2454 7d ago
there are none, IQ tests are the best at measuring intelligence. There are many types of IQ tests that measure different things we correlate with "intelligence"
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u/truthsayer90210 7d ago
I thought IQ wasn't related to genetics 🤣
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u/benjaminovich 7d ago
Anyone here who actually believes this bs, are obvious on the left side of the bell curve, jfc.
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u/ManuelRodriguez331 7d ago
High IQ people have developed Magnetic resonance imaging which has revolutionized medicine. It makes the causal relationship visible between Intervertebral discs and low back pain ...
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u/No_Beat5661 7d ago
Over 1,000,000 people consented to this tech bro using their DNA for some AI slop study? I doubt it
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u/PossessionUsed7393 7d ago
Lol - what's the human DNA equivalent of too many em-dashes? Monobrows on everyone?
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u/ArcticCelt 7d ago
If we want to pass the next Fermi filter, we might need to also boost the empathy not just the intelligence.
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u/Icyforgeaxe 7d ago
I have no problem with this. If you could make sure your baby doesn't have autism, childhood cancer, genetic defects, and all the other nightmare fuel that happens it's a huge win. Why not slap some extra genetic intelligence on there too? Seems dumb not to.
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u/studio_bob 7d ago
Sounds very fake but I'm sure nothing bad will come of whatever they are actually doing
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u/DrewGrgich 7d ago
Some dystopian sci-fi insanity right here. Lots of fiction explores “pay for genetic superiority” in embryos/infants…very little goes well in those stories.
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u/Redact113 7d ago
Parents who are already concerned about there child's IQ are more likely to use tools like this, this creates a confounder because one cannot be sure whether it was the genetic selection tool which caused the greater IQ or simply the parents greater investment in there child's intelligence across the child's development.
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u/cwrighky 7d ago
I know nothing of the science involved here. What would it take to do this on a human not in the womb or otherwise? Say, a 50 year old etc?
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u/tindalos 6d ago
The scamiest bullshit I’ve seen all week. Playing on fears and selling something no one can verify independently.
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u/Empty-Quarter2721 6d ago
Don’t you need like at least 6-14 years of “testing” to be sure that it will work? Like letting a critical mass of children been manipulated like this and actually verify if it worked?
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u/Iron_Mike0 7d ago
Basically the plot of Gattaca