I want to see more work on physical security for everyday folks during a singularity. For example, imagine a tick-sized robot that could crawl up someone’s leg, burrow under their skin, and poison them or do other nasty damage. This feels physically possible and hard to defend against. If such robots become cheap, how would society cope? Would we rely on physical monitoring of peoples’ clothing? Would we try to determine who sent the robot after it does its damage? I think we can already start making guesses.
First, primitive defenses can help counter advanced offenses. Counter-drone warfare in Ukraine provides many examples: netting hung over roads, “turtle tanks” with metal sheds welded on top, inflatable decoys. These simple defenses don’t suffice, you also need interceptor drones and counter-drone teams, but they’re important. I expect miniaturized robots would be similar: you’d probably want to combine advanced defenses like bloodstream monitoring for bioweapons or ultrasonic echolocation of airborne threats with stupid defenses like thicker doors or regularly washed floors, and predicting the stupid defenses is something I reckon we can start now.
Second, even if there’s a threat for which no stupid defenses exist, I think it’s better to know about it. For example, I also worry about ant-sized robots building nuclear bombs underneath targets; I don’t see any stupid defenses against that. But we can still brace ourselves: we might recognize that cities will need to install underground metal detectors, maybe someone publishes UraniumDetectionDeviceBench, etcetera. I’d rather face known unknowns than unknown unknowns.
Strong magnets in/around your house to pull in the kill-ticks? EMP? This assumes the kill-ticks are made of metal, and are not biological in nature, which is a guess.
For bio-kill-ticks, maybe some kind of static electricity, such that every time you touch anything you feel a zap. Should be essentially harmless to humans, but might kill a bio-kill-tick?
For actual kill-microbes, I think we’re just doomed. Look at how bad a job we do defending against natural bacteria and viruses. Intelligent murder-bacteria would be the end of our species.
In general I find it hard to imagine a future where people have to wear fishing waders to ward off robot-tick bites, where humanity has not simply been obliterated. This scenario seems to fall into the same very narrow band as most sci-fi movies, where there could be things like humans fighting robots with assault rifles. Probably we either have an aligned superintelligence on our side helping us, or we’re cooked.
I completely agree that, without a country of aligned geniuses in a datacenter, we’re dead. But I still think we should try to predict what dangers we’ll face. I’d classify murder-bacteria as a known threat; for example, Anthropic talks about bioweapon capabilities. What do unknown threats look like?
I want to see more work on physical security for everyday folks during a singularity. For example, imagine a tick-sized robot that could crawl up someone’s leg, burrow under their skin, and poison them or do other nasty damage. This feels physically possible and hard to defend against. If such robots become cheap, how would society cope? Would we rely on physical monitoring of peoples’ clothing? Would we try to determine who sent the robot after it does its damage? I think we can already start making guesses.
I don’t see how this would be tractable? Unless you had an equally powerful, aligned AI which was consistently producing defenses.
First, primitive defenses can help counter advanced offenses. Counter-drone warfare in Ukraine provides many examples: netting hung over roads, “turtle tanks” with metal sheds welded on top, inflatable decoys. These simple defenses don’t suffice, you also need interceptor drones and counter-drone teams, but they’re important. I expect miniaturized robots would be similar: you’d probably want to combine advanced defenses like bloodstream monitoring for bioweapons or ultrasonic echolocation of airborne threats with stupid defenses like thicker doors or regularly washed floors, and predicting the stupid defenses is something I reckon we can start now.
Second, even if there’s a threat for which no stupid defenses exist, I think it’s better to know about it. For example, I also worry about ant-sized robots building nuclear bombs underneath targets; I don’t see any stupid defenses against that. But we can still brace ourselves: we might recognize that cities will need to install underground metal detectors, maybe someone publishes UraniumDetectionDeviceBench, etcetera. I’d rather face known unknowns than unknown unknowns.
Strong magnets in/around your house to pull in the kill-ticks? EMP? This assumes the kill-ticks are made of metal, and are not biological in nature, which is a guess.
For bio-kill-ticks, maybe some kind of static electricity, such that every time you touch anything you feel a zap. Should be essentially harmless to humans, but might kill a bio-kill-tick?
For actual kill-microbes, I think we’re just doomed. Look at how bad a job we do defending against natural bacteria and viruses. Intelligent murder-bacteria would be the end of our species.
In general I find it hard to imagine a future where people have to wear fishing waders to ward off robot-tick bites, where humanity has not simply been obliterated. This scenario seems to fall into the same very narrow band as most sci-fi movies, where there could be things like humans fighting robots with assault rifles. Probably we either have an aligned superintelligence on our side helping us, or we’re cooked.
I completely agree that, without a country of aligned geniuses in a datacenter, we’re dead. But I still think we should try to predict what dangers we’ll face. I’d classify murder-bacteria as a known threat; for example, Anthropic talks about bioweapon capabilities. What do unknown threats look like?