Evolution "failure mode": chickens

Abstract

Modern chickens, especially common broiler chickens, illustrate the “Mindless Outsourcers” scenario in the possible negative outcomes of human evolution. As described by Nick Bostrom, the first scenario involves evolution leading to a society where individuals, represented as competitive “uploads”, outsource more and more necessary functions to external modules, eventually resulting in such dependency that they become effectively mindless. A similar trend is evident in modern chickens, where specific breeds have been developed for specific traits, such as featherlessness (for saving air-conditioning costs), blindness (for reducing overcrowding stress), and even brainlessness (for maximizing meat production). These chickens have lost their natural characteristics and behaviors, and their sole purpose has become the production of meat or eggs – a chilling example of the “Mindless Outsourcers” scenario, where beings are reduced to mere production units lacking intrinsic value – AI-generated abstract.