Is there a biological tech level you're expecting when building an FAI becomes possible?
I don't know. We don't actually need any technology other than Python and vi. ;) But it's possible uploads, cloning, genetic engineering, and so forth will be common then.
What do you mean by "naturally born"? Are artificial wombs a problem?
Yes, just to be safe, we should avoid anyone born through IVF, for instance, or whose birth was created or assisted in a lab, or who experienced any genetic modification. I'm not sure exactly where to draw the line: fertility drugs might be ok. I meant anyone conceived through normal intercourse without any technological intervention. Such people can be added in later if the CEV of the others wants them added.
It's conceivable that children have important input for what children need that adults have for the most part forgotten.
Yes, this is a really good point, but CEV adds in what we would add in if we knew more and remembered more.
Exclude people who aren't different or problematic in any perceptible way because of your yuck factor?
Minor point, but are turkey basters technology?
Aside from the problem of leaving out what seems to be obviously part of the human range, I think that institutionalizing that distinction for something so crucial would lead to prejudice.
It’s the year 2045, and Dr. Evil and the Singularity Institute have been in a long and grueling race to be the first to achieve machine intelligence, thereby controlling the course of the Singularity and the fate of the universe. Unfortunately for Dr. Evil, SIAI is ahead in the game. Its Friendly AI is undergoing final testing, and Coherent Extrapolated Volition is scheduled to begin in a week. Dr. Evil learns of this news, but there’s not much he can do, or so it seems. He has succeeded in developing brain scanning and emulation technology, but the emulation speed is still way too slow to be competitive.
There is no way to catch up with SIAI's superior technology in time, but Dr. Evil suddenly realizes that maybe he doesn’t have to. CEV is supposed to give equal weighting to all of humanity, and surely uploads count as human. If he had enough storage space, he could simply upload himself, and then make a trillion copies of the upload. The rest of humanity would end up with less than 1% weight in CEV. Not perfect, but he could live with that. Unfortunately he only has enough storage for a few hundred uploads. What to do…
Ah ha, compression! A trillion identical copies of an object would compress down to be only a little bit larger than one copy. But would CEV count compressed identical copies to be separate individuals? Maybe, maybe not. To be sure, Dr. Evil gives each copy a unique experience before adding it to the giant compressed archive. Since they still share almost all of the same information, a trillion copies, after compression, just manages to fit inside the available space.
Now Dr. Evil sits back and relaxes. Come next week, the Singularity Institute and rest of humanity are in for a rather rude surprise!