Comments on: Brain Emulation and Hard Takeoff

By: Accelerating Future » Hard Takeoff Sources

Accelerating Future » Hard Takeoff Sources — Mon, 16 May 2011 09:58:23 +0000

[...] by Eliezer Yudkowsky “The Hanson-Yudkowsky AI Foom Debate” (2008) on Less Wrong wiki “Brain Emulation and Hard Takeoff” by Carl Shulman “Arms Control and Intelligence Explosions” (2009) by Carl Shulman [...]

By: Overcoming Bias : “Evicting” brain emulations

Overcoming Bias : “Evicting” brain emulations — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 01:26:46 +0000

[...] Follow up to: Brain Emulation and Hard Takeoff [...]

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:47:31 +0000

Michael, James (a professional economist) is right here; you are wrong. Professionals know things!

By: James D. Miller

James D. Miller — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:00:53 +0000

michael vassar – But if Firm B can raise as much as it wants from capital markets (and do so very quickly) it wouldn’t get outbid for input resources.

By: michael vassar

michael vassar — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 06:17:28 +0000

James Miller: The owners of firm A have massive wealth in the short term, as does firm A as an entity. Firm A can raise more money on capital markets thatn Firm B can. Both firm A and firm B can use the same limited supply of people with the relevant skills and of computers to improve their products. Firm A can thus out-bid Firm B for the resources which Firm B needs to improve its design.
The key point is that car companies can’t do this but upload companies can because the market for cars early in the history of the automobile is limited compared to the global supply for steel, rubber, etc. By contrast, the market for high quality mental labor at a low price is huge compared to that for at least some inputs into R&D or into computer production so those inputs can be exhausted completely.

By: Ian C.

Ian C. — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 05:20:30 +0000

‘Say what? Rebellion? I’m turning these bastards off!’

Or detonate our secret EM pulse bomb.

By: Richard Hollerith

Richard Hollerith — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:58:21 +0000

Good to see more by Carl.

By: Filipe Tomé

Filipe Tomé — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:29:08 +0000

Hmm

What’s the opposit of a neutron bomb?

Anyway, we could always put a switch on the robots…
‘Say what? Rebellion? I’m turning these bastards off!’

By: Carl Shulman

Carl Shulman — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 16:30:10 +0000

“But if firm B is expected to earn a long term positive economic profit it could raise all the money it wanted on capital markets.”

Provided that contract enforcement and property rights are secure, so that lenders believe they will be repaid, and can be approached without resulting in government expropriation. The expropriation concern is why my discussion above focuses on ways to acquire hardware/funds without drawing hostile attention. However, I did mention lending, as “promising the Moon,” since while a firm using loan funding to conduct an in-house intelligence explosion could promise absurdly high interest rates, if it were successful creditors would no longer be able to enforce a contractual obligation for repayment through the legal system, and would need to rely on the honor of the debtor.

By: James D. Miller

James D. Miller — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:01:51 +0000

Carl wrote in a comment “Initially sole knowledge of cost-effective em design means that you get a vastly, vastly, higher return on investment on research expenditures than others do.”

Let’s say that firm A has the cost-effective em design whereas firm B has a cost-ineffective em design. Imagine that it will take firm B lots of time and capital to develop a cost-effective em design.

True, give both firm A and firm B a dollar and firm A could use it to generate more revenue than firm B could.

But if firm B is expected to earn a long term positive economic profit it could raise all the money it wanted on capital markets. There would be no financial constrain on firm B and thus no financial market advantage to firm A even if firm A could always earn greater accounting profits than firm B.

(Economists define profit taking into account opportunity costs. So let’s say I can do X or Y but not both. If X would give me $20 and Y $22 then my economic profit from doing Y is $2. In contrast an accountant would say that doing Y gives you a profit of $22. I’m not assuming that Carl doesn’t know this.)