One thing I noticed is that claim 1 speak about nationstates while most of the AI-bits speak about companies/projects. I don’t think this is a huge problem, but it seems worth looking into.
It seems true that it’ll be necessary to localize the secret bits into single projects, in order to keep things secret. It also seems true that such projects could keep a lead on the order of months/years.
However, note that this does no longer correspond to having a country that’s 30 years ahead of the rest of the world. Instead, it corresponds to having a country with a single company 30 years ahead of the world. The equivalent analogy is: could a company transported 30 years back in time gain a decisive strategic advantage for itself / whatever country it landed in?
A few arguments:
A single company might have been able to bring back a single military technology, which may or may not have been sufficient to turn the world, alone. However, I think one can argue that AI is more multipurpose than most technologies.
If the company wanted to cooperate with its country, there would be an implementation lag after the technology was shared. In old times, this would perhaps correspond to building the new ships/planes. Today, it might involve taking AI architectures and training them for particular purposes, which could be more or less easy depending on the generality of the tech. (Maybe also scaling up hardware?) During this time, it would be easier for other projects and countries to steal the technology (though of course, they would have implementation lags of their own).
In the historical case, one might worry that a modern airplane company couldn’t produce much useful things 30 years back in time, because they relied on new materials and products from other companies. Translated to when AI-companies develops along with the world, this would highlight that the AI-company could develop a 30-year-lead-equivalent in AI-software, but that might not correspond to a 30-year-lead-equivalent in AI-technology, insofar as progress is largely driven by improvements to hardware or other public inputs to the process. (Unless the secret AI-project is also developing hardware.) I don’t think this is very problematic: hardware progress seems to be slowing down, while software is speeding up (?), so if everything went faster things would probably be more software driven?
Perhaps one could also argue that a 3-year lead would translate to an even greater lead, because of recursive self-improvement, in which case the company would have an even greater lead over the rest of the world.
Overall, these points don’t seem too important, and I think your claims still go through.
Great post!
One thing I noticed is that claim 1 speak about nationstates while most of the AI-bits speak about companies/projects. I don’t think this is a huge problem, but it seems worth looking into.
It seems true that it’ll be necessary to localize the secret bits into single projects, in order to keep things secret. It also seems true that such projects could keep a lead on the order of months/years.
However, note that this does no longer correspond to having a country that’s 30 years ahead of the rest of the world. Instead, it corresponds to having a country with a single company 30 years ahead of the world. The equivalent analogy is: could a company transported 30 years back in time gain a decisive strategic advantage for itself / whatever country it landed in?
A few arguments:
A single company might have been able to bring back a single military technology, which may or may not have been sufficient to turn the world, alone. However, I think one can argue that AI is more multipurpose than most technologies.
If the company wanted to cooperate with its country, there would be an implementation lag after the technology was shared. In old times, this would perhaps correspond to building the new ships/planes. Today, it might involve taking AI architectures and training them for particular purposes, which could be more or less easy depending on the generality of the tech. (Maybe also scaling up hardware?) During this time, it would be easier for other projects and countries to steal the technology (though of course, they would have implementation lags of their own).
In the historical case, one might worry that a modern airplane company couldn’t produce much useful things 30 years back in time, because they relied on new materials and products from other companies. Translated to when AI-companies develops along with the world, this would highlight that the AI-company could develop a 30-year-lead-equivalent in AI-software, but that might not correspond to a 30-year-lead-equivalent in AI-technology, insofar as progress is largely driven by improvements to hardware or other public inputs to the process. (Unless the secret AI-project is also developing hardware.) I don’t think this is very problematic: hardware progress seems to be slowing down, while software is speeding up (?), so if everything went faster things would probably be more software driven?
Perhaps one could also argue that a 3-year lead would translate to an even greater lead, because of recursive self-improvement, in which case the company would have an even greater lead over the rest of the world.
Overall, these points don’t seem too important, and I think your claims still go through.