There’s something more basic about the analogy I object to. Google, Friendster, Altavista and Facebook were not founded at the beginning of a singularity.
What do you mean by that? You think Google isn’t going to go on to develop machine intelligence? Surely they are among the front runners—though admittedly there are some other players in the game. This is not a case of hanging around for some future event.
The first creatures to develop human-level intelligence came to dominate all other creatures.
The first humans to develop agriculture did not come to dominate all other humans
The wording of the question was:
Compared to the farming and industrial revolutions, intelligence explosion first-movers will quickly control a much larger fraction of their new world.
It doesn’t say the control is kept indefinitely. So—for instance—Sergey and Larry might die—but they will still have quickly come to control a larger fraction of the world than any farmer or industrialist.
What do you mean by that? You think Google isn’t going to go on to develop machine intelligence? Surely they are among the front runners—though admittedly there are some other players in the game. This is not a case of hanging around for some future event.
The wording of the question was:
It doesn’t say the control is kept indefinitely. So—for instance—Sergey and Larry might die—but they will still have quickly come to control a larger fraction of the world than any farmer or industrialist.