That seems possible if (1) AI progress depends more on insights rather than “compute/energy/data/other software” as Paul suggests and (2) leading AI projects are farsighted enough to forgo short-term profits. I’m unsure about (1) but (2) seems false at least.
It seems like a stronger argument for your position is that (as I suggested earlier) instead of companies not selling access to their AI innovations at all, they sell them in a way that doesn’t cause their innovations to leak out. This is how Google currently sells access to innovations in search engine algorithms, for example.
Hmm, OK. I like your point about making profits without giving away secrets.
And yeah I think you (and Paul’s comment below) is helping me to get the picture a bit better—because the economy is growing so fast, moonshot projects that don’t turn a profit for a while just won’t work because the people capable of affording them one year will be paupers by comparison to the people capable of funding AI research the next year (due to the general boom). And so while a tech-hoarding project will still technically have more insights than the economy as a whole, its lead will shrink as its relative funding shrinks.
Another way I think my scenario could happen, though, is if governments get involved. Because governments have the power to tax. Suppose we have a pool of insights that is publicly available, and from it we get this rapidly growing economy fueled by publicly available AI technologies. But then we have a government that taxes this entire economy and funnels the revenue into an AGI project that hoards all its insights. Won’t this AGI project have access to more insights than anyone else? If there is an intelligence explosion, won’t it happen first (and/or faster) inside the project than outside? We don’t have to worry about getting outcompeted by other parts of the economy, since those parts are getting taxed. The funding for our AGI project will rise in proportion to the growth in the AI sector of the economy, even though our AGI project is hoarding all its secrets.
That seems possible if (1) AI progress depends more on insights rather than “compute/energy/data/other software” as Paul suggests and (2) leading AI projects are farsighted enough to forgo short-term profits. I’m unsure about (1) but (2) seems false at least.
It seems like a stronger argument for your position is that (as I suggested earlier) instead of companies not selling access to their AI innovations at all, they sell them in a way that doesn’t cause their innovations to leak out. This is how Google currently sells access to innovations in search engine algorithms, for example.
Hmm, OK. I like your point about making profits without giving away secrets.
And yeah I think you (and Paul’s comment below) is helping me to get the picture a bit better—because the economy is growing so fast, moonshot projects that don’t turn a profit for a while just won’t work because the people capable of affording them one year will be paupers by comparison to the people capable of funding AI research the next year (due to the general boom). And so while a tech-hoarding project will still technically have more insights than the economy as a whole, its lead will shrink as its relative funding shrinks.
Another way I think my scenario could happen, though, is if governments get involved. Because governments have the power to tax. Suppose we have a pool of insights that is publicly available, and from it we get this rapidly growing economy fueled by publicly available AI technologies. But then we have a government that taxes this entire economy and funnels the revenue into an AGI project that hoards all its insights. Won’t this AGI project have access to more insights than anyone else? If there is an intelligence explosion, won’t it happen first (and/or faster) inside the project than outside? We don’t have to worry about getting outcompeted by other parts of the economy, since those parts are getting taxed. The funding for our AGI project will rise in proportion to the growth in the AI sector of the economy, even though our AGI project is hoarding all its secrets.