I agree with most of these claims. However, I disagree about the level of intelligence required to take over the world, which makes me overall much more scared of AI/doomy than it seems like you are. I think there is at least a 20% chance that a superintelligence with +12 SD capabilities across all relevant domains (esp. planning and social manipulation) could take over the world.
I think human history provides mixed evidence for the ability of such agents to take over the world. While almost every human in history has failed to accumulate massive amounts of power, relatively few have tried. Moreover, when people have succeeded at quickly accumulating lots of power/taking over societies, they often did so with surprisingly small strategic advantages. See e. g. this post; I think that an AI that was both +12 SD at planning/general intelligence and social manipulation could, like the conquistadors, achieve a decisive strategic advantage without having to have some kind of crazy OP military technology/direct force advantage. Consider also Hitler’s rise to power and the French Revolution as cases where one actor/a small group of actors was able to surprisingly rapidly take over a country.
While these examples provide some evidence in favor of it being easier than expected to take over the world, overall, I would not be too scared of a +12 SD human taking over the world. However, I think that the AI would have some major advantages over an equivalently capable human. Most importantly, the AI could download itself onto other computers. This seems like a massive advantage, allowing the AI to do basically everything much faster and more effectively. While individually extremely capable humans would probably greatly struggle to achieve a decisive strategic advantage, large groups of extremely intelligent, motivated, and competent humans seem obviously much scarier. Moreover, as compared to an equivalently sized group of equivalently capable humans, a group of AIs sharing their source code would be able to coordinate among themselves far better, making them even more capable than the humans.
Finally, it is much easier for AIs to self modify/self improve than it is for humans to do so. While I am skeptical of foom for the same reasons you are, I suspect that over a period of years, a group of AIs could accumulate enough financial and other resources that they could translate these resources into significant cognitive improvements, if only by acquiring more compute.
While the AI has the disadvantage relative to an equivalently capable human of not immediately having access to a direct way to affect the “external” world, I think this is much less important than the AIs advantages in self replication, coordination, an self improvement.
I agree with most of these claims. However, I disagree about the level of intelligence required to take over the world, which makes me overall much more scared of AI/doomy than it seems like you are. I think there is at least a 20% chance that a superintelligence with +12 SD capabilities across all relevant domains (esp. planning and social manipulation) could take over the world.
I specifically said a human with +12 SD g factor. I didn’t actually consider what a superintelligence that was at that level on all domains would mean, but I don’t think it would matter because of objection 4: by the time superhuman agents arrive, we would already have numerous superhuman non agentic AI, including systems specialised for planning/tactics/strategy.
You’d need to make particular claims about how a superhuman agent performs in a world of humans amplified by superhuman non agents. It’s very not obvious to me that they can win any ensuing cognitive arms race.
I am sceptical that a superhuman agent /agency would easily attain decisive cognitive superiority to the rest of civilisation.
Hmm… I guess I’m skeptical that we can train very specialized “planning” systems? Making superhuman plans of the sort that could counter those of an agentic superintelligence seems like it requires both a very accurate and domain-general model of the world as well as a search algorithm to figure out which plans actually accomplish a given goal given your model of the world. This seems extremely close in design space to a more general agent. While I think we could have narrow systems which outperform the misaligned superintelligence in other domains such as coding or social manipulation, general long-term planning seems likely to me to be the most important skill involved in taking over the world or countering an attempt to do so.
In the intervening period, I’ve updated towards your position, though I still think it is risky to build systems with capabilities that open ended which are that close to agents in design space
I agree with most of these claims. However, I disagree about the level of intelligence required to take over the world, which makes me overall much more scared of AI/doomy than it seems like you are. I think there is at least a 20% chance that a superintelligence with +12 SD capabilities across all relevant domains (esp. planning and social manipulation) could take over the world.
I think human history provides mixed evidence for the ability of such agents to take over the world. While almost every human in history has failed to accumulate massive amounts of power, relatively few have tried. Moreover, when people have succeeded at quickly accumulating lots of power/taking over societies, they often did so with surprisingly small strategic advantages. See e. g. this post; I think that an AI that was both +12 SD at planning/general intelligence and social manipulation could, like the conquistadors, achieve a decisive strategic advantage without having to have some kind of crazy OP military technology/direct force advantage. Consider also Hitler’s rise to power and the French Revolution as cases where one actor/a small group of actors was able to surprisingly rapidly take over a country.
While these examples provide some evidence in favor of it being easier than expected to take over the world, overall, I would not be too scared of a +12 SD human taking over the world. However, I think that the AI would have some major advantages over an equivalently capable human. Most importantly, the AI could download itself onto other computers. This seems like a massive advantage, allowing the AI to do basically everything much faster and more effectively. While individually extremely capable humans would probably greatly struggle to achieve a decisive strategic advantage, large groups of extremely intelligent, motivated, and competent humans seem obviously much scarier. Moreover, as compared to an equivalently sized group of equivalently capable humans, a group of AIs sharing their source code would be able to coordinate among themselves far better, making them even more capable than the humans.
Finally, it is much easier for AIs to self modify/self improve than it is for humans to do so. While I am skeptical of foom for the same reasons you are, I suspect that over a period of years, a group of AIs could accumulate enough financial and other resources that they could translate these resources into significant cognitive improvements, if only by acquiring more compute.
While the AI has the disadvantage relative to an equivalently capable human of not immediately having access to a direct way to affect the “external” world, I think this is much less important than the AIs advantages in self replication, coordination, an self improvement.
I specifically said a human with +12 SD g factor. I didn’t actually consider what a superintelligence that was at that level on all domains would mean, but I don’t think it would matter because of objection 4: by the time superhuman agents arrive, we would already have numerous superhuman non agentic AI, including systems specialised for planning/tactics/strategy.
You’d need to make particular claims about how a superhuman agent performs in a world of humans amplified by superhuman non agents. It’s very not obvious to me that they can win any ensuing cognitive arms race.
I am sceptical that a superhuman agent /agency would easily attain decisive cognitive superiority to the rest of civilisation.
Hmm… I guess I’m skeptical that we can train very specialized “planning” systems? Making superhuman plans of the sort that could counter those of an agentic superintelligence seems like it requires both a very accurate and domain-general model of the world as well as a search algorithm to figure out which plans actually accomplish a given goal given your model of the world. This seems extremely close in design space to a more general agent. While I think we could have narrow systems which outperform the misaligned superintelligence in other domains such as coding or social manipulation, general long-term planning seems likely to me to be the most important skill involved in taking over the world or countering an attempt to do so.
Well, simulator type systems like GPT-3 do not become agents if amplified to superhuman cognition.
Simulators could be used to generate/evaluate superhuman plans without being agents with independent objectives of their own.
In the intervening period, I’ve updated towards your position, though I still think it is risky to build systems with capabilities that open ended which are that close to agents in design space