It’s no longer my top priority, but I have a bunch of notes and arguments relating to AGI takeover scenarios that I’d love to get out at some point. Here are some of them:
Beating the game in May 1937 - Hoi4 World Record Speedrun Explained—YouTube In this playthrough, the USSR has a brief civil war and Trotsky replaces Stalin. They then get an internationalist socialist type diplomat who is super popular with US, UK, and France, who negotiates passage of troops through their territory—specifially, they send many many brigades of extremely low-tier troops (basically just militia with rifles riding trucks and horses) on goodwill visits to those countries… and then they surprise-declare war on the whole world EXCEPT the powerful countries. So, only the weak nations of the world. But this provokes the US, UK, and France to declare war on the USSR, starting a fight with all the troops on their territory. This proves to be difficult for them; they haven’t mobilized their forces and these damn commie militias are peppered throughout their countryside, running around causing havoc. (In my headcanon, this works in part because many socialists and communists within those countries decide Now is the Worldwide Revolution and join the militias and give them aid, and in part because the USSR is seen as the victim not the aggressor—e.g. the French military attacked these poor militias who were just peacefully touring through the countryside sharing their experiences of life under socialism and preaching a Better Way.) France surrenders quickly, and then the US and UK fight on for a while but eventually capitulate, because the countryside goes to the Reds and then the various military units are encircled. Then there’s a conventional war against the Axis powers (helped along by the might of US, UK, and France) and then it’s just mop-up.
Crazy unrealistic hacky/exploity playthrough? I mean yeah, but… well, watch the next video, keeping in mind that Cortez started with 500 men and the Aztec Empire had hundreds of thousands of warriors:
For a textual description of what was happening, to complement the map, see this old post of mine. I think the whole “ask to parlay with the emperor, then tell him you’ll kill him if he doesn’t do as you say, then rule the empire with him as a puppet” seems like a sort of hack/exploit in the game engine of reality. What other exploits are waiting to be discovered?
Even if you think Cortez just got lucky (he didn’t) this just goes to show that crazy takeovers like this are in-distribution historically. It’s reasonable to think that a superintelligence would be able to reliably achieve outcomes that are on the tail end of the distribution for humans.
It’s no longer my top priority, but I have a bunch of notes and arguments relating to AGI takeover scenarios that I’d love to get out at some point. Here are some of them:
Beating the game in May 1937 - Hoi4 World Record Speedrun Explained—YouTube
In this playthrough, the USSR has a brief civil war and Trotsky replaces Stalin. They then get an internationalist socialist type diplomat who is super popular with US, UK, and France, who negotiates passage of troops through their territory—specifially, they send many many brigades of extremely low-tier troops (basically just militia with rifles riding trucks and horses) on goodwill visits to those countries… and then they surprise-declare war on the whole world EXCEPT the powerful countries. So, only the weak nations of the world. But this provokes the US, UK, and France to declare war on the USSR, starting a fight with all the troops on their territory. This proves to be difficult for them; they haven’t mobilized their forces and these damn commie militias are peppered throughout their countryside, running around causing havoc. (In my headcanon, this works in part because many socialists and communists within those countries decide Now is the Worldwide Revolution and join the militias and give them aid, and in part because the USSR is seen as the victim not the aggressor—e.g. the French military attacked these poor militias who were just peacefully touring through the countryside sharing their experiences of life under socialism and preaching a Better Way.) France surrenders quickly, and then the US and UK fight on for a while but eventually capitulate, because the countryside goes to the Reds and then the various military units are encircled. Then there’s a conventional war against the Axis powers (helped along by the might of US, UK, and France) and then it’s just mop-up.
Crazy unrealistic hacky/exploity playthrough? I mean yeah, but… well, watch the next video, keeping in mind that Cortez started with 500 men and the Aztec Empire had hundreds of thousands of warriors:
Spanish Conquest of Aztec Empire (1519 − 1521): Every Day—YouTube
For a textual description of what was happening, to complement the map, see this old post of mine. I think the whole “ask to parlay with the emperor, then tell him you’ll kill him if he doesn’t do as you say, then rule the empire with him as a puppet” seems like a sort of hack/exploit in the game engine of reality. What other exploits are waiting to be discovered?
Even if you think Cortez just got lucky (he didn’t) this just goes to show that crazy takeovers like this are in-distribution historically. It’s reasonable to think that a superintelligence would be able to reliably achieve outcomes that are on the tail end of the distribution for humans.