So I think in the long run, the only way biological brains win is if we simply do not build AGI.
Depends on how long you’re talking about. It seems plausible to me that, if we got a bunch of 250 IQ humans, then they could in fact do a major redesign of neurons. However, I would expect all this to take at least 100 years (if not aided by superintelligent AI), which is longer than most AI timelines I’ve seen (unless we bring AI development to a snail’s pace or a complete stop).
Huh. I would actually bet on the 250 IQ humans being able to redesign neurons in far less than 100 years. But I think the odds of such humans existing before AGI is low.
I’m counting the time it takes to (a) develop the 250 IQ humans [15-50 years], (b) have them grow to adulthood and become world-class experts in their fields [25-40 years], (c) do their investigation and design in mice [10-25 years], and (d) figure out how to incorporate it into humans nonfatally [5-15 years].
Then you’d either grow new humans with the super-neurons, or figure out how to change the neurons of existing adults; the former is usually easier with genetics, but I don’t think you could dial the power up to maximum in one generation without drastically changing how mental development goes in childhood, with a high chance of causing most children to develop severe psychological problems; the 250 IQ researchers would be good at addressing this, of course, perhaps even at evaluating the early signs of those problems early (to allow faster iteration); but I think they’d still have to spend 10-50 years on iterating with human children before fixing the crippling bugs.
So I think it might be faster to solve the harder problem of replacing an adult’s neurons with backwards-compatible, adjustable super-neurons—that can interface with the old ones but also use the new method to connect to each other, which initially works at the same speed but then you can dial it up progressively and learn to fix the problems as they come up. Harder to set it up—maybe 5-10 extra years—but once you have it, I’d say 5-15 years before you’ve successfully dialed people up to “maximum”.
Depends on how long you’re talking about. It seems plausible to me that, if we got a bunch of 250 IQ humans, then they could in fact do a major redesign of neurons. However, I would expect all this to take at least 100 years (if not aided by superintelligent AI), which is longer than most AI timelines I’ve seen (unless we bring AI development to a snail’s pace or a complete stop).
Huh. I would actually bet on the 250 IQ humans being able to redesign neurons in far less than 100 years. But I think the odds of such humans existing before AGI is low.
I’m counting the time it takes to (a) develop the 250 IQ humans [15-50 years], (b) have them grow to adulthood and become world-class experts in their fields [25-40 years], (c) do their investigation and design in mice [10-25 years], and (d) figure out how to incorporate it into humans nonfatally [5-15 years].
Then you’d either grow new humans with the super-neurons, or figure out how to change the neurons of existing adults; the former is usually easier with genetics, but I don’t think you could dial the power up to maximum in one generation without drastically changing how mental development goes in childhood, with a high chance of causing most children to develop severe psychological problems; the 250 IQ researchers would be good at addressing this, of course, perhaps even at evaluating the early signs of those problems early (to allow faster iteration); but I think they’d still have to spend 10-50 years on iterating with human children before fixing the crippling bugs.
So I think it might be faster to solve the harder problem of replacing an adult’s neurons with backwards-compatible, adjustable super-neurons—that can interface with the old ones but also use the new method to connect to each other, which initially works at the same speed but then you can dial it up progressively and learn to fix the problems as they come up. Harder to set it up—maybe 5-10 extra years—but once you have it, I’d say 5-15 years before you’ve successfully dialed people up to “maximum”.