Smart Enough to Go Extinct? An Evolutionary Challenge to the Value of General Intelligence and Its Ethical Implications for AGI

Abstract The pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI) is widely regarded as the paramount objective of contemporary AI research. This aspiration rests on a seemingly self-evident premise: that general intelligence—the kind of flexible, domain-general cognitive capacity exemplified by Homo sapiens—is extraordinarily valuable. The present paper subjects this premise to critical scrutiny. We first present the intuitive case for the value of general intelligence, acknowledging its genuine strengths, before mounting an evolutionary challenge. We argue that, when measured against the timescales on which biological evolution operates, the adaptive value of general intelligence is far from empirically established. Numerous taxa—from cyanobacteria to horseshoe crabs—have persisted for hundreds of millions, even billions, of years without anything resembling general intelligence, while Homo sapiens has existed for roughly 300,000 years and already faces self-generated existential risks. Mass extinction events, examined as natural experiments, do not preferentially favour cognitively sophisticated species. We argue that general intelligence may be the only biological strategy that generates existential threats to the species that possesses it—an existential risk paradox with no parallel among non-intelligent survival strategies. Unlike the prevailing framing of AI risk, which traces the danger to misalignment, we locate it in the structural features of general intelligence itself, so that even a well-aligned artificial general intelligence would inherit this liability. If the long-term evolutionary value of general intelligence is uncertain or even negative, this raises profound ethical questions about the engineering of AGI systems and, with still greater urgency, about the creation of artificial consciousness—beings that would be both generally intelligent and sentient. Drawing on deontological ethics and the precautionary principle, we argue that this uncertainty imposes a duty of caution: if we bring into existence a new kind of intelligent being, we bear responsibility for ensuring the conditions under which it can flourish. Similar content being viewed by others Data Availability Not applicable. References Aiello, L. C., & Wheeler, P. (1995). The expensive-tissue hypothesis: The brain and the digestive system in human and primate evolution. Current Anthropology, 36(2), 199–221. https://doi.org/10.1086/204350 Bambach, R. K., Knoll, A. H., & Wang, S. C. (2006). Origination, extinction, and mass depletions of marine diversity. Paleobiology, 32(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1666/0094-8373(2006)032[0001:OEAMDO]2.0.CO;2 Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). The biomass distribution on Earth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(25), 6506–6511. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1711842115 Bell, E. A., Boehnke, P., Harrison, T. 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Rights and permissions Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. About this article Cite this article Klotz, D. Smart Enough to Go Extinct? An Evolutionary Challenge to the Value of General Intelligence and Its Ethical Implications for AGI. Philos. Technol. 39, 164 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-026-01176-4 Received: Accepted: Published: Version of record: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-026-01176-4