# Artificial Descendants **Entity class:** Evolutionary and civilizational concept **Domain:** Machine succession / technological evolution / inheritance ## Definition Artificial descendants are engineered intelligences understood not merely as tools or products but as inheritors of human knowledge, culture, goals, institutions or civilizational capacity. The concept separates biological descent from informational and cultural descent: a successor may continue something human without sharing human genes or constituting the first-person survival of any particular person. ## Analytical distinctions [[wiki/Artificial Descendants|Artificial descendants]] may arise through independent machine lineages, [[wiki/Human-Machine Merger|human-machine merger]], or designed systems that remain under human constitutional control. The term does not by itself establish consciousness, moral status, inevitability or desirability. It names a relationship of construction and inheritance that must still be evaluated through [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]], [[wiki/Continuity Succession|Continuity Succession]], [[wiki/Digital Personhood|Digital Personhood]] and [[wiki/Civilizational Handoff|Civilizational Handoff]]. ## Primary routes [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] · [[articles/Sam Altman and The Merge|The Merge]] · [[wiki/Biological Bootloader|Biological Bootloader]] · [[wiki/Mind Children|Mind Children]] ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “In the long run the sheer physical inability of humans to keep up with these rapidly evolving progeny of our minds will ensure that the ratio of people to machines approaches zero, and that a direct descendant of our culture, but not our genes, inherits the universe.” > **— Hans Moravec**, *“Today’s Computers, Intelligent Machines and Our Future,” 1978* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Our Culture Not Our Genes Could Inherit the Universe by Hans Moravec|Our Culture Not Our Genes Could Inherit the Universe by Hans Moravec]] > “I consider these future machines our progeny, “mind children” built in our image and likeness, ourselves in more potent form. Like biological children of previous generations, they will embody humanity’s best hope for a long-term future. It behooves us to give them every advantage, and to bow out when we can no longer contribute.” > **— Hans Moravec**, *Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind preview, 1997–1998* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Future Machines Are Our Mind Children by Hans Moravec|Future Machines Are Our Mind Children by Hans Moravec]] > “Although the merge has already begun, it’s going to get a lot weirder. We will be the first species ever to design our own descendants. My guess is that we can either be the biological bootloader for digital intelligence and then fade into an evolutionary tree branch, or we can figure out what a successful merge looks like.” > **— Sam Altman**, *“The Merge,” December 7, 2017* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Designing Our Descendants Requires Choosing Between Bootloader and Merge by Sam Altman|Designing Our Descendants Requires Choosing Between Bootloader and Merge by Sam Altman]]