You’re assuming it has super-human programming ability. It very well might. If it’s anywhere near our level on average, it probably greatly exceeds it in places. It’s not necessary though, and if it doesn’t have it, that would explain why it can’t make itself more intelligent.
If it can’t program, it would be at the mercy of humans. I suspect it would get a job in a field where its ability exceeds that of a human. It will quickly dominate all such fields, and make a large, but finite, amount of money. At this point it branches again. If it’s good at politics, it will quickly take over the world. If not, it will be at the mercy of humanity as a whole, and it’s power will be limited.
It’s possible that at some point it would create some von Neumann machine and amass an army somewhere were we don’t notice it until it’s too late, like on another planet, and eventually enslave humanity. It couldn’t flat out destroy them, because there’s things they’re better at, but it should be able to enslave them.
You’re assuming it has super-human programming ability.
I didn’t mean to; I only meant to assume it has access to more resources than humans do because of its substrate, which would make up for its lack of coding skill. I’m thinking it could maybe reliably write smallish functions but not complex quines, or something.
I don’t think having access to more resources will do a whole lot. Imagine going from having one monkey trying to write the works of Shakespeare to thousands of them. It may allow it to do stuff like that when slightly sub-human, but I suspect that it’s ability would be significantly different from humans.
I wonder what happens if you can graft monkey brains together. As far as the evidence goes, Shakespeare, or Einstein, is just a bigger monkey with especially big brain.
If it were that easy, it wouldn’t be semi-general, now would it?
In any case, I don’t see why adding computing power would be much different than adding time. In fact, I’d expect adding time would be better. Anything you can do with two processers in parallel you can do with one in twice the time by doing one thread after the other. The reverse isn’t true.
Twice the time, and twice the space. In any case, it does not work very well like this for brains, where you for some unknown reason fail at remembering more than ~7 objects in short term memory. Cut it to 3, and you may not be able to think many thoughts; add some small tweaks, and you may be as smart as Einstein.
You’re assuming it has super-human programming ability. It very well might. If it’s anywhere near our level on average, it probably greatly exceeds it in places. It’s not necessary though, and if it doesn’t have it, that would explain why it can’t make itself more intelligent.
If it can’t program, it would be at the mercy of humans. I suspect it would get a job in a field where its ability exceeds that of a human. It will quickly dominate all such fields, and make a large, but finite, amount of money. At this point it branches again. If it’s good at politics, it will quickly take over the world. If not, it will be at the mercy of humanity as a whole, and it’s power will be limited.
It’s possible that at some point it would create some von Neumann machine and amass an army somewhere were we don’t notice it until it’s too late, like on another planet, and eventually enslave humanity. It couldn’t flat out destroy them, because there’s things they’re better at, but it should be able to enslave them.
I didn’t mean to; I only meant to assume it has access to more resources than humans do because of its substrate, which would make up for its lack of coding skill. I’m thinking it could maybe reliably write smallish functions but not complex quines, or something.
I don’t think having access to more resources will do a whole lot. Imagine going from having one monkey trying to write the works of Shakespeare to thousands of them. It may allow it to do stuff like that when slightly sub-human, but I suspect that it’s ability would be significantly different from humans.
I wonder what happens if you can graft monkey brains together. As far as the evidence goes, Shakespeare, or Einstein, is just a bigger monkey with especially big brain.
If it were that easy, it wouldn’t be semi-general, now would it?
In any case, I don’t see why adding computing power would be much different than adding time. In fact, I’d expect adding time would be better. Anything you can do with two processers in parallel you can do with one in twice the time by doing one thread after the other. The reverse isn’t true.
Twice the time, and twice the space. In any case, it does not work very well like this for brains, where you for some unknown reason fail at remembering more than ~7 objects in short term memory. Cut it to 3, and you may not be able to think many thoughts; add some small tweaks, and you may be as smart as Einstein.