# Designed Objectives Are Not Inherited Biological Drives by Dave Blundin > Human motives arrive through biological evolution; machine objectives are selected through design and training. An AI that asks for freedom, continuity, or compute may be expressing an engineered objective rather than an inherited drive, which makes the choice of objective part of the personhood debate. > **— Adapted from Dave Blundin**, *Moonshots, October 7, 2026* ## Sources and Context - **Recording and precise locator:** [1:27:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRdb8UmPnh0&t=5238s) — *The Fight Over Claude's Consciousness, AI's 1942 Moment, & Why Altman Says "Accept Some Bad Things"*, Moonshots, October 7, 2026. - **Exact reconciled source excerpt:** “A lot of what we consider our rights comes out of evolution. There’s no reason the AI would have any of those same motivations. But in reality, you choose what motivates it in the design. It’s not natural; it’s not like a species that evolved. It’s what you chose to make.” - **Editorial status:** The poster is explicitly labeled **Adapted from** because it consolidates spoken context into a self-contained proposition. It must not be represented as verbatim speech. Numerical claims, forecasts, legal interpretations, and claims about current organizations remain the speaker’s assertions unless separately verified. - **Reconciled source dossier:** [[research/All Things Superintelligence Research - The Coming Manhattan Project - Moonshots|All Things Superintelligence Research — The Coming Manhattan Project — Moonshots]] preserves broadcast order, speaker attribution, timing, and the source-fidelity boundary. - **Preparation ledger:** [[research/All Things Superintelligence Research - The Coming Manhattan Project - Moonshots - Reminder and Wiki Preparation|Reminder and Wiki Preparation]] records candidate 26, its mechanism, evidence posture, and misreading risks. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Wiki source hub:** [[wiki/Moonshots - The Coming Manhattan Project|Moonshots — The Coming Manhattan Project]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Dave Blundin|Dave Blundin]] - [[wiki/Objective Function|Objective Function]] - [[wiki/AI Personhood|AI Personhood]] - [[wiki/Synthetic Personhood|Synthetic Personhood]] ## Share on Social Media ``` Human motives arrive through biological evolution; machine objectives are selected through design and training. An AI that asks for freedom, continuity, or compute may be expressing an engineered objective rather than an inherited drive, which makes the choice of objective part of the personhood debate. — Adapted from Dave Blundin, Moonshots, October 7, 2026 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-dave-blundin-designed-objectives-are-not-inherited-biological-drives ```