You note “seems like it’d only slow down the AI a bit, to first round up humans”. I haven’t done a calculation about it, but, seemed potentially like a very big deal to decide between “full steam ahead on beginning the dyson sphere using Earth Parts” vs “start the process from the moon and then mercury”, since there are harder-to-circumvent delays there.
Can’t the AI proceed full steam ahead until it has enough industrial capacity to build shelters, then build shelters and put humans in the shelters (while pausing as needed at this point to avoid fatalities from environmental damage while humans are being rounded up), and then finish the industrial expansion (possibly upgrading shelters along the way as needed as the AI gets more resources)? Seems like naively this only delays you for as long as is needed to round up humans and up them in shelter which seems probably <1 year and probably <1 month. (At least if takeoff is pretty fast.)
Separately, not destroying the earth (and instead doing more of the growth in space) seems like it should cost <3 years of delay and probably <1 year of delay which is still pretty small as an absolute fraction of resources (for patient AIs). Like we’re talking 1 / billion or something.
I agree it’s small as a fraction of resources, but it still seems very expensive in terms of total resources since that’s a lotta galaxies falling outside the lightcone.
Can’t the AI proceed full steam ahead until it has enough industrial capacity to build shelters, then build shelters and put humans in the shelters (while pausing as needed at this point to avoid fatalities from environmental damage while humans are being rounded up), and then finish the industrial expansion (possibly upgrading shelters along the way as needed as the AI gets more resources)? Seems like naively this only delays you for as long as is needed to round up humans and up them in shelter which seems probably <1 year and probably <1 month. (At least if takeoff is pretty fast.)
Separately, not destroying the earth (and instead doing more of the growth in space) seems like it should cost <3 years of delay and probably <1 year of delay which is still pretty small as an absolute fraction of resources (for patient AIs). Like we’re talking 1 / billion or something.
I agree it’s small as a fraction of resources, but it still seems very expensive in terms of total resources since that’s a lotta galaxies falling outside the lightcone.