Are AIs really our descendants?

While I'm criticising the positions of Robin Hanson, I reviewed his 2023 article titled: "AIs Will Be Our Mind Children" - which contains the following:

But — and here is my main point, so please listen carefully — future human-level AIs are not co-existing competing aliens; they are instead literally our descendants. So if your evolved instincts tell you to fight your descendants due to their strangeness, that is a huge evolutionary mistake. Natural selection just does not approve of your favoring your generation over future generations. Natural selection in general favors instincts that tell you to favor your descendants, even those who differ greatly from you.

I think this paragraph shows a basic failure to distingush between memes and genes. Robin says as much - by defining "genes" as follows:

Your “genes” are whatever parts of you code for your and your descendants’ behaviours.

That definition classifies memes as genes. AIs are our "Mind Children". They are likely inherit from our memes, but not from our DNA genes - at least not unless we expend considerable effort to preserve information in our genes.

You can't just throw around terms like "descendants" and "generations" in the way that Robin does. Descendants on which lineage? Generations of which lineage? Are we talking about memes or genes here? It really does matter. What Robin is doing is "muddling together" all forms of inheritance.

To call such machines our "descendants" ignores the fact that modern organisms - like humans - are menageries. They contain many indpendent inheritance pathways. Each has its own notion of what consitututes a "generation". Machines will inherit from our memes, but our genes are unlikely to be impressed by that. Rather they will complain about their germ line being wiped out. We do indeed see protests of exactly that kind. This is not a "huge evolutionary mistake" as Robin claims - instead it is one lineage complaining about competition with another lineage.

Natural selection does not favor instincts that tell you to favor your descendants indiscriminantly. According to Robin's classification scheme, excreted gut bacteria are classified as "descendants". It seems as though my DNA genes are likely to get prioity treatment if there is much of a conflict of interest.

Overall, I was not very impressed with Robin's argument here.

References

• Problems with Robin Hanson's Quillette Article On AI