Speed of economic growth affects the duration of the demographic transition from high-birth-rate-and-high-death-rate to low-birth-rate-and-low-death-rate, for individual countries; and thus affects the total world population.
A high population world, full of low-education people desperately struggling to survive (ie low on Maslow’s hierarchy), might be more likely to support making bad decisions about AI development for short term nationalistic reasons.
Is it plausible that UFAI (or any kind of strong AI) will be created by just one person? It seems like important mathematical discoveries have been made single-handedly, like calculus.
Neither Newton nor Liebniz invented calculus single-handedly as is often described. There was a lot of precursor work. Newton for example credited the idea of the derivative to Fermat’s prior work on drawing tangent lines (which itself was a generalization of ancient Greek ideas about tangents for conic sections). Others also discussed similar notions before Newton and Liebniz such as the mean speed theorem. After both of them, a lot of work still needed to be done to make calculus useful. The sections of calculus which Newton and Liebniz did is only about half of what is covered in a normal into calc class today.
A better example might be Shannon’s development of information theory which really did have almost no precursors and did leap from his brow fully formed like Athena.
UFAI is not likely to be a purely mathematical discovery. The most plausible early UFAI designs will require vast computational resources and huge amounts of code.
In addition, UFAI has a minimum level of intelligence required before it becomes a threat; one might well say that UFAI is analogous not to calculus itself, but rather to solving a particular problem in calculus that uses tools not invented for hundreds of years after Newton and Leibniz.
AI is a math problem, yes. And almost all math problems have been solved by a single person. And several math theories were also build this way. Single-headedly.
Abraham Lincoln invented another proof for Pythagorean Theorem. Excellent for a POTUS, more than most mathematicians ever accomplish. Not good enough for anything like AI.
Could be, that the AI problem is not harder than Fermat Last Theorem. Could be that it is much harder. Harder than Riemann’s conjecture, maybe.
It is also possible that it is just hard enough for one dedicated (brilliant) human and will be solved suddenly.
How likely is it that AI would be developed first in a poor, undeveloped country that hasn’t gone through the demographic transition? My guess is: extremely low.
I’d agree. But point out the troubles originating with a country often don’t stay within the borders of that country. If you are a rich but small country, with an advanced computer industry, and your neighbour is a large but poor country, with a strong military, this is going to affect your decisions.
Something to take into account:
Speed of economic growth affects the duration of the demographic transition from high-birth-rate-and-high-death-rate to low-birth-rate-and-low-death-rate, for individual countries; and thus affects the total world population.
A high population world, full of low-education people desperately struggling to survive (ie low on Maslow’s hierarchy), might be more likely to support making bad decisions about AI development for short term nationalistic reasons.
UFAI might be developed by a large company as well as by a country.
Or by a garage firm.
Is it plausible that UFAI (or any kind of strong AI) will be created by just one person? It seems like important mathematical discoveries have been made single-handedly, like calculus.
Neither Newton nor Liebniz invented calculus single-handedly as is often described. There was a lot of precursor work. Newton for example credited the idea of the derivative to Fermat’s prior work on drawing tangent lines (which itself was a generalization of ancient Greek ideas about tangents for conic sections). Others also discussed similar notions before Newton and Liebniz such as the mean speed theorem. After both of them, a lot of work still needed to be done to make calculus useful. The sections of calculus which Newton and Liebniz did is only about half of what is covered in a normal into calc class today.
A better example might be Shannon’s development of information theory which really did have almost no precursors and did leap from his brow fully formed like Athena.
UFAI is not likely to be a purely mathematical discovery. The most plausible early UFAI designs will require vast computational resources and huge amounts of code.
In addition, UFAI has a minimum level of intelligence required before it becomes a threat; one might well say that UFAI is analogous not to calculus itself, but rather to solving a particular problem in calculus that uses tools not invented for hundreds of years after Newton and Leibniz.
AI is a math problem, yes. And almost all math problems have been solved by a single person. And several math theories were also build this way. Single-headedly.
Abraham Lincoln invented another proof for Pythagorean Theorem. Excellent for a POTUS, more than most mathematicians ever accomplish. Not good enough for anything like AI.
Could be, that the AI problem is not harder than Fermat Last Theorem. Could be that it is much harder. Harder than Riemann’s conjecture, maybe.
It is also possible that it is just hard enough for one dedicated (brilliant) human and will be solved suddenly.
I don’t think it will be just one person, but I don’t have a feeling for how large a team it would take. Opinions?
How likely is it that AI would be developed first in a poor, undeveloped country that hasn’t gone through the demographic transition? My guess is: extremely low.
I’d agree. But point out the troubles originating with a country often don’t stay within the borders of that country. If you are a rich but small country, with an advanced computer industry, and your neighbour is a large but poor country, with a strong military, this is going to affect your decisions.