Comments on: AI In Far And Near View

By: XOR

XOR — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:50:27 +0000

Tech gets harder to master. Newer, more difficult tech cannot become distributed across teams as fast as earlier, simpler tech.
Can any team be so superior that no other team can replicate the research? I’d argue it gets more probable by the day.

There will come a point when no usable information will seep outside the walls of firms or small teams. Some techs will evolve into black boxes. You really can’t tell exactly what goes into a CPU chip these days.

There’s a high probability that there will be, if there already aren’t, “untouchable” tech firms, with so tricky in-house theoretical knowledge, research and production methods and equipment, that no matter how much resources are thrown at it, competitors can’t catch up.

And if these people are smart enough to stay quiet and out of sight, which they will be, the competition won’t even know what to look for, until it’s way way too late. The spy organizations of the world know this.

By: Accelerating Future » Assorted Links 2/1/2010

Accelerating Future » Assorted Links 2/1/2010 — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:54:17 +0000

[...] to use artificial intelligence and other advanced data processing to hit the enemy where it hurts Robin Hanson: AI In Far And Near View The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting MIT’s Mind-Machine Project: Student Position Paper [...]

By: ad

ad — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:25:05 +0000

The US was the first to develop nuclear weapons. We promptly used two, then stopped.

IIRC, in 1945 the US only had two available to use. And it used both of them.

And I don’t think it had many for some years afterwards. A handful of kiloton-range bombs do not convey worldwide omnipotence.

For purposes of comparison, the RAF and USAAF dropped ~ one million tons of bombs on Germany in the last year of the war.

By: ad

ad — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:10:52 +0000

Can you prove that the vassals would have been better off if Cortes had been defeated?

Given a choice between overlords who wanted a lot of gold and silver, and overlords who wanted to cut my heart out, I think I would be better off with the former option.

I might point out that the vast majority of deaths were due to epidemics, and the bugs presumably did not care which human won the war.

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:45:46 +0000

I stand corrected.

By: Peter McCluskey

Peter McCluskey — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:48:58 +0000

That 1% number was for a similar but not identical scenario:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/11/setting-the-sta.html

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 05:41:51 +0000

Better off materially perhaps, but there’s a lot of painful hate to suppress before you reach Realpolitik.

By: Roko

Roko — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 02:35:55 +0000

Hmm, I am sure that you said that. Oh well, I take it back. But if you say “the probability is high enough to justify a large effort to avoid that bad scenario” I certainly agree, but it seems more important to focus on the more easily winnable em scenario as far as “activism” goes.

By: James Daniel Miller

James Daniel Miller — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:40:52 +0000

Cotres was able to trick many of the Axtecs’ vassals into supporting him even though the vassals would have been better off if Cortes had been defeated.

By: mjgeddes

mjgeddes — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:31:41 +0000

It was Cortes who instigated the rebellions so that’s an example of his application of social intelligence (‘a bit of clever oratory here and there’).