Sure, the AI probably can’t use all the mass-energy of the solar system efficiently within the next week or something, but that just means that it’s going to want to store that mass-energy for later (...)
If the AI can indeed engineer black-hole powered matter-to-energy converters, it will have so much fuel that the mass stored in human bodies will be a rounding error to it. Indeed, given the size of other easily accessible sources, this would seem to be the case even if it has to resort to more primitive technology and less abundant fuel as its terminal energy source, such as hydrogen-hydrogen fusion reactors. Almost irrespective of what its terminal goals are, it will have more immediate concerns than going after that rounding error. Likewise, it would in all likelihood have more pressing worries than trying to plan out its future to the heat death of the universe (because it would recognize that no such plan will survive its first billion years, anyway).
I think we’re imagining slightly different things by “superintelligence”, because in my mind the obvious first move of the superAI is to kill literally all humans (...) The oft-quoted way around these parts that the AI can kill us all without us knowing is by figuring out which DNA sequences to send to a lab to have them synthesized into proteins, (...creating...) a virus much more lethal than anything we’ve ever seen, or a new species of bacteria with diamond skin, or some other thing that can be made from DNA-coded proteins.
I am imagining by “superintelligence” an entity that is for general cognition approximately what Stockfish is for chess: globally substantially better at thinking than any human expert in any domain, although possibly with small cognitive deficiencies remaining (similar to how it is fairly easy to find chess positions that Stockfish fails to understand but that are not difficult for humans). It might be smarter than that, of course, but anything with these characteristics would qualify as an SI in my mind.
I don’t find the often-quoted diamondoid bacteria very convincing. Of course it’s just a placeholder here, but still I cannot help but note that producing diamondoid cell membranes would, especially in a unicellular organism, more likely be an adaptive disadvantage (cost, logistics of getting things into and out of the cell) than a trait that is conducive to grey-gooing all naturally evolved organisms. More generally, it seems to me that the argument from bioweapons hinges on the ability of the superintelligence to develop highly complex biological agents without significant testing. It furthermore needs to develop them in such a way, again without testing, that they are quickly and quietly lethal after spreading through all or most of the human population without detection. In my mind, that combination of properties borders on assuming the superintelligence has access to magic, at least in a world that has reasonable controls against access to biological weapons manufacturing and design capabilities in place.
When setting in motion such a murderous plan, the AI would also, on its first try, have to be extremely certain that it is not going to get caught if it is playing the long game we assume it is playing. Otherwise cooperation with humans followed by expansion beyond Earth seems like a less risky strategy for long-term survival than hoping that killing everyone will go right and hoping that there is indeed nothing left to learn for it from living organisms.
If the AI can indeed engineer black-hole powered matter-to-energy converters, it will have so much fuel that the mass stored in human bodies will be a rounding error to it. Indeed, given the size of other easily accessible sources, this would seem to be the case even if it has to resort to more primitive technology and less abundant fuel as its terminal energy source, such as hydrogen-hydrogen fusion reactors. Almost irrespective of what its terminal goals are, it will have more immediate concerns than going after that rounding error. Likewise, it would in all likelihood have more pressing worries than trying to plan out its future to the heat death of the universe (because it would recognize that no such plan will survive its first billion years, anyway).
I am imagining by “superintelligence” an entity that is for general cognition approximately what Stockfish is for chess: globally substantially better at thinking than any human expert in any domain, although possibly with small cognitive deficiencies remaining (similar to how it is fairly easy to find chess positions that Stockfish fails to understand but that are not difficult for humans). It might be smarter than that, of course, but anything with these characteristics would qualify as an SI in my mind.
I don’t find the often-quoted diamondoid bacteria very convincing. Of course it’s just a placeholder here, but still I cannot help but note that producing diamondoid cell membranes would, especially in a unicellular organism, more likely be an adaptive disadvantage (cost, logistics of getting things into and out of the cell) than a trait that is conducive to grey-gooing all naturally evolved organisms. More generally, it seems to me that the argument from bioweapons hinges on the ability of the superintelligence to develop highly complex biological agents without significant testing. It furthermore needs to develop them in such a way, again without testing, that they are quickly and quietly lethal after spreading through all or most of the human population without detection. In my mind, that combination of properties borders on assuming the superintelligence has access to magic, at least in a world that has reasonable controls against access to biological weapons manufacturing and design capabilities in place.
When setting in motion such a murderous plan, the AI would also, on its first try, have to be extremely certain that it is not going to get caught if it is playing the long game we assume it is playing. Otherwise cooperation with humans followed by expansion beyond Earth seems like a less risky strategy for long-term survival than hoping that killing everyone will go right and hoping that there is indeed nothing left to learn for it from living organisms.