I should have made myself clearer. What I meant was assuming that an organization interested in building FAI can first achieve an upload-singleton, it won’t be facing competition from other uploads (since that’s what “singleton” means). It will be facing significantly less time pressure than a similar organization trying to build FAI directly. (Delay will still cause astronomical waste due to physical resources falling away into event horizons and the like, but that seems negligible compared to the existential risks that we face now.)
What I meant was assuming that an organization interested in building FAI can first achieve an upload-singleton, it won’t be facing competition from other uploads.
But this assumption is rather unlikely/difficult to implement, so in the situation where we count on it, we’ve already lost a large portion of the future. Also, this course of action (unlikely to succeed as it is in any case) significantly benefits from massive funding to buy computational resources, which is a race. The other alternative, which is educating people in a way that increases the chances of a positive upload-driven outcome, is also a race, for development of better understanding of metaethics/rationality and for educating more people better.
I should have made myself clearer. What I meant was assuming that an organization interested in building FAI can first achieve an upload-singleton, it won’t be facing competition from other uploads (since that’s what “singleton” means). It will be facing significantly less time pressure than a similar organization trying to build FAI directly. (Delay will still cause astronomical waste due to physical resources falling away into event horizons and the like, but that seems negligible compared to the existential risks that we face now.)
But this assumption is rather unlikely/difficult to implement, so in the situation where we count on it, we’ve already lost a large portion of the future. Also, this course of action (unlikely to succeed as it is in any case) significantly benefits from massive funding to buy computational resources, which is a race. The other alternative, which is educating people in a way that increases the chances of a positive upload-driven outcome, is also a race, for development of better understanding of metaethics/rationality and for educating more people better.