Malevolent humans with access to advanced technology—such as whole brain emulation or other forms of transformative AI—could cause serious existential risks and suffering risks.
In this preregistered study, we have two novel findings: 1) Utilitarian moral preferences are strongly and psychopathy is mildly associated with positive approval of MindUpload; and 2) that Machiavellianism – essentially a calculative self-interest related trait – is strongly associated with positive approval of Mind Upload, even after controlling for Utilitarianism and the previously known predictor of Sexual Disgust (and conservatism). In our preregistration, we had assumed that the effect would be dependent on Psychopathy (another Dark Triad personality dimension), rather than Machiavellianism. However, given how closely related Machiavellianism and Psychopathy are, we argue that the results match our hypothesis closely. Our results suggest that the perceived risk of callous and selfish individuals preferring Mind Upload should be taken seriously, as previously speculated by Sotala & Yampolskiy (2015)
Possibly relevant: Machiavellians Approve of Mind Upload Technology Directly and Through Utilitarianism (Laakasuo et al. 2020), though it mainly tested whether machiavellians express moral condemnation of mind uploading, rather than their interest directly.