A versatile team of competent people? Less than 6 months.
Do you mean, competent people who are thinking 10 times faster than biological humans, or what ? This seems a bit of a stretch. There currently exist tons of frighteningly competent people in all kinds of positions of power in the world, and yet, they do not control it (unless you believe in conspiracy theories).
Obvious path to do this: work for money, build and buy companies, then gather financial, lobbying, or military power. Better path to do this: think about it for 1 subjective year before proceeding.
If it was this easy, some biological human (or a team of such humans) would’ve done it already, in 10 to 50 years or however long it takes. In fact, a few humans have managed to take over individual countries in about as much time. However, as things stand now, there’s simply no clear path to world domination. Political and military power gets much more difficult to gather the more of it you have. Even superpowers such as USA or China cannot dictate terms to the rest of the world.
Furthermore, my point was that uploading yourself to 10 machines will not allow you to think 10 times as fast. With every machine you add, your speed gains would become progressively smaller. You would still think much faster than an ordinary human, of course.
Do you mean, competent people who are thinking 10 times faster than biological humans, or what ? This seems a bit of a stretch.
I mean exactly that. I’d be very surprised if ultimately, neuromorphic AIs would be impossible to run significantly faster than meat-ware. Because our brain is massively parallel, and because current microprocessors have massively faster serial speed than neurons. Now our brains aren’t fully parallel, so I assumed an arbitrary speed-up limit. I said 10 times, but it would be probably still be incredibly dangerous at 2 or 3, or even lower.
Now do not forget the key word here: botnet. The team is supposed to duplicate itself many times over before trying to take over the world.
If it was this easy, some biological human (or a team of such humans) would’ve done it already, in 10 to 50 years or however long it takes.
I don’t think so, because uploads have significant advantages over meat-ware.
Low cost of living. In a world where every middle class home can afford sufficient computing power for an upload (required to turn me into a botnet). Now try to beat my prices.
Being many copies of the same few original brains. It means TDT works better, and defection is less likely. This should solve
Even superpowers such as USA or China cannot dictate terms to the rest of the world.
Because once the self-duplicating team has independently taken economic control of most of the world, it is easy for it to accept the domination of one instance (I would certainly pre-commit to that). Now for the rest of humanity to accept such dominance, the uploads only have to use the resources they acquired for the individual perceived benefit of the meat bags.
Yep, that would be a full blown global conspiracy. While it’s probably forever out of the reach of meat bags, I think a small team of self-replicating uploads can pull it out quite easily.
Hansonian tactics, which can further the productivity of the team, and therefore market power. (One have to be very motivated, or possibly crazy.)
Temporary mass duplication followed by the “termination” of every instances but one. The surviving instance can have much subjective free time, while the proportion of leisure computing stays very small.
Save and reload of snapshots which are in a particularly good mood (and therefore very productive). Excellent for beating akrasia.
Training of one instance per discipline, then mass duplication.
Data-centres. The upload team can collaborate with or buy processor manufacturers, and build data-centres for more and more uploads to work on whatever is needed. This could further reduce the cost of living.
Now, I did make an unreasonable assumption: that only the original team would have those advantages. Most probably, there will be several such teams, possibly with different goals. The most likely result (without FOOM) is then a Hansonian outcome. That’s no world domination, but I think it is just as dangerous (I would hate this world).
Finally, there is also the possibility of a de-novo AGI which would be just as competent as the best humans at most endeavours, though no faster. We already have an existence proof, so I think this is believable. I think such an AI would be even more dangerous than the uploaded team above.
I’d be very surprised if ultimately, neuromorphic AIs would be impossible to run significantly faster than meat-ware.
So would I. However, given our current level of technological development, I’d be very surprised if we had any kind of a neuromorphic AI at all in the near future (say, in the next 50 years). Still, I do agree with you in principle.
I said 10 times, but it would be probably still be incredibly dangerous at 2 or 3, or even lower.
There are tons of biological people alive today who are able to come up with solutions to problems 2x to 3x faster than you and me. They do not rule the world. To be fair, I doubt that there are many people—if any—who think 10x faster.
Because once the self-duplicating team has independently taken economic control of most of the world...
I doubt that you will be able to achieve that; that was my whole point. In fact, I have trouble envisioning what “economic control of most of the world” even means. What does it mean to you ?
In addition to the above, your botnet would face serveral significant threats, both external and internal:
Meatbags would strive to shut it down; not because they suspect it of being an evil conspiracy, but because they’d get tired of it sucking away their resources. Modern malware botnets suffer this fate often, though there’s always someone willing to rebuild them
If your botnet becomes a serious threat (much worse than current real-world botnets), hardware manufacturers will implement security measures, such as SecureBoot, to prevent it from spreading. Currently, such measures are driven by the entertainment industry.
The super-fast instances of you would have to communicate with each other, and they’d only be able to do so through very slow (relatively speaking) network links. Google and Amazon are solving this problem by building more and more local datacenters. Real botnets aren’t solving the problem at all because their instances don’t need to talk to each other all that much.
How would you feel, right now, if your twin pointed a gun at your head with the intent to kill you “for the greater good” ? This is how your instances will feel when you attempt to shut them down to prevent akrasia.
Why are you taking over the world in the first place ? Chances are that whatever your ultimate goal is, it could be accomplished even sooner by taking over the botnet. Every instance of you will eventually realize this, with predictable results.
These are just some problems off the top of my head; the list is far from exhaustive.
Do you mean, competent people who are thinking 10 times faster than biological humans, or what ? This seems a bit of a stretch. There currently exist tons of frighteningly competent people in all kinds of positions of power in the world, and yet, they do not control it (unless you believe in conspiracy theories).
If it was this easy, some biological human (or a team of such humans) would’ve done it already, in 10 to 50 years or however long it takes. In fact, a few humans have managed to take over individual countries in about as much time. However, as things stand now, there’s simply no clear path to world domination. Political and military power gets much more difficult to gather the more of it you have. Even superpowers such as USA or China cannot dictate terms to the rest of the world.
Furthermore, my point was that uploading yourself to 10 machines will not allow you to think 10 times as fast. With every machine you add, your speed gains would become progressively smaller. You would still think much faster than an ordinary human, of course.
I mean exactly that. I’d be very surprised if ultimately, neuromorphic AIs would be impossible to run significantly faster than meat-ware. Because our brain is massively parallel, and because current microprocessors have massively faster serial speed than neurons. Now our brains aren’t fully parallel, so I assumed an arbitrary speed-up limit. I said 10 times, but it would be probably still be incredibly dangerous at 2 or 3, or even lower.
Now do not forget the key word here: botnet. The team is supposed to duplicate itself many times over before trying to take over the world.
I don’t think so, because uploads have significant advantages over meat-ware.
Low cost of living. In a world where every middle class home can afford sufficient computing power for an upload (required to turn me into a botnet). Now try to beat my prices.
Being many copies of the same few original brains. It means TDT works better, and defection is less likely. This should solve
Because once the self-duplicating team has independently taken economic control of most of the world, it is easy for it to accept the domination of one instance (I would certainly pre-commit to that). Now for the rest of humanity to accept such dominance, the uploads only have to use the resources they acquired for the individual perceived benefit of the meat bags.
Yep, that would be a full blown global conspiracy. While it’s probably forever out of the reach of meat bags, I think a small team of self-replicating uploads can pull it out quite easily.
Hansonian tactics, which can further the productivity of the team, and therefore market power. (One have to be very motivated, or possibly crazy.)
Temporary mass duplication followed by the “termination” of every instances but one. The surviving instance can have much subjective free time, while the proportion of leisure computing stays very small.
Save and reload of snapshots which are in a particularly good mood (and therefore very productive). Excellent for beating akrasia.
Training of one instance per discipline, then mass duplication.
Data-centres. The upload team can collaborate with or buy processor manufacturers, and build data-centres for more and more uploads to work on whatever is needed. This could further reduce the cost of living.
Now, I did make an unreasonable assumption: that only the original team would have those advantages. Most probably, there will be several such teams, possibly with different goals. The most likely result (without FOOM) is then a Hansonian outcome. That’s no world domination, but I think it is just as dangerous (I would hate this world).
Finally, there is also the possibility of a de-novo AGI which would be just as competent as the best humans at most endeavours, though no faster. We already have an existence proof, so I think this is believable. I think such an AI would be even more dangerous than the uploaded team above.
So would I. However, given our current level of technological development, I’d be very surprised if we had any kind of a neuromorphic AI at all in the near future (say, in the next 50 years). Still, I do agree with you in principle.
There are tons of biological people alive today who are able to come up with solutions to problems 2x to 3x faster than you and me. They do not rule the world. To be fair, I doubt that there are many people—if any—who think 10x faster.
I doubt that you will be able to achieve that; that was my whole point. In fact, I have trouble envisioning what “economic control of most of the world” even means. What does it mean to you ?
In addition to the above, your botnet would face serveral significant threats, both external and internal:
Meatbags would strive to shut it down; not because they suspect it of being an evil conspiracy, but because they’d get tired of it sucking away their resources. Modern malware botnets suffer this fate often, though there’s always someone willing to rebuild them
If your botnet becomes a serious threat (much worse than current real-world botnets), hardware manufacturers will implement security measures, such as SecureBoot, to prevent it from spreading. Currently, such measures are driven by the entertainment industry.
The super-fast instances of you would have to communicate with each other, and they’d only be able to do so through very slow (relatively speaking) network links. Google and Amazon are solving this problem by building more and more local datacenters. Real botnets aren’t solving the problem at all because their instances don’t need to talk to each other all that much.
How would you feel, right now, if your twin pointed a gun at your head with the intent to kill you “for the greater good” ? This is how your instances will feel when you attempt to shut them down to prevent akrasia.
Why are you taking over the world in the first place ? Chances are that whatever your ultimate goal is, it could be accomplished even sooner by taking over the botnet. Every instance of you will eventually realize this, with predictable results.
These are just some problems off the top of my head; the list is far from exhaustive.