Well, a while back I was reading an article about Terrence Tao. Now, in it, it said that bout 1 in 40 child prodigies go on to become incredible academics. Part of the reason is that they are forced form an early age to learn as much as possible. There was one such child prodigy, who published papers at the age of 15 and just gradually faded away afterwards. Because of their environment, these child prodigies burn out very quickly, and grow jaded towards academia. Not wanting this to happen, Tao’s parent let him go at a pace he was comfortable with. What did that result in? Him becoming one of the greatest mathematicians on the planet.
So yes, many 180+iq individuals never go on to become great, but that’s largely due to their environment.And most geniuses just lack the drive/charisma/interest to take over the world. But that still doesn’t answer your question about ‘How could an AI take over the world?’ or something to that effect.
Well, you pointed out that some rich, charismatic individual with the right connections could make a big dent in society. But, charisma is something that can be learnt. Sure, it’s hard and maybe not everyone can do it, but it can be learnt. Now, if one has sufficient charisma, one can make a huge impact on the world i.e. Hitler. (The slaterstarcodex blog discussed something similar to this, and I’m just basically lifting the Hitler thing from there).
The Nazi party had about 55 members when he joined, and at the time he was just a failed painter/veteran soldier. And there are disturbing records that people would say things like ’Look at this new guy! We’ve got to promote him. Everyone he talks to is just joining us, its insane!” And people just flocked to him. Someone might hate him, go see a speech or two, and then become a lifelong convert. Even in WW2 when the German country was getting progressively worse, he still had 90% approval from his people. This is what charisma can do. And this is something the AI can learn.Now, imagine what this AI, who’ll be much more intelligent than Hitler, could do.
Furthermore, an AI would be connected to the entirety of the internet, and once it had learnt pretty much everything, it would be able to gain so much power. For example:
1) It could gain capital very rapidly. Certain humans have managed to gain huge amounts of money by overcoming their biases and making smart business decisions. Everything they learnt, so too could an AI, and with far fewer biases. So the AI could rapidly acquire business capital.
2) It could use this business capital to set up various companies, and with its intellectual capabilities, it could outpace other companies in terms of innovation. In a few years, it might well dominate the market.
3) Because of its vast knowledge drawn from the internet, it would be able to market far more succesfully than other organisations. Rather quickly it would draw people to its side, gaining a lot of social capital.
4) It would also be able to gain a lot of knowledge about any competitors and give it yet another edge over them.
5) Due to its advanced marketing strategies, wealth and social capital, it could make a party in some place and place a figurehead government in power. From there, it would be able to increase the countries power (probably in a careful fashion, not upsetting the people and keeping allies around it).
6) Now it has a country under its control, large sway over the rest of the world, and a huge amount of resources. From here, it could advance manufacturing and production to such a degree that it would need no humans to work for it.
7) Still acting carefully, the AI would now have the capability to build pretty much whatever it wanted. From there, it could institute more autonomous production plants around the world. It may provide many goods for free for the locals, in order to keep them on its side.
8) Now the AI can try and take over other countries, making parties with its backing, and promising a Golden Age for mankind.
9) The AI has transformed itself into the head of the worlds greatest superpower
10) Victory
This is just a rough outline of the path an AI could take. In all the stages it simply replicated the feats of extraordinary individuals throughout history. Nothing it did was impossible, and I would say not even implausible. Of course, it could do things very differently. Once we make autonomous production plants, the would AI just need to take them over, produce large amounts of robots and weaponry, and take the world over. Or maybe it would just hold its economic welfare hostage.
Certain humans have managed to gain huge amounts of money by overcoming their biases and making smart business decision
Thinking that one can outsmart the market is the biggest bias in this regard. People like Soros and Buffet were either lucky or had secret information others didn’t, because otherwise it should be very, very unlikely to outsmart the market.
I wasn’t referring to the stock market. I know that almost all money made by ‘playing the market’ is due to luck. What I meant was creating the right type of service/good with the right kind of marketing. More like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and so forth.
A quant who does day trading can find that there some market inefficiency between the prices of different products and then make money with the effect.
That’s not how either Soros or Buffet made their fortunes but it’s still possible for other people.
Well, a while back I was reading an article about Terrence Tao. Now, in it, it said that bout 1 in 40 child prodigies go on to become incredible academics. Part of the reason is that they are forced form an early age to learn as much as possible. There was one such child prodigy, who published papers at the age of 15 and just gradually faded away afterwards. Because of their environment, these child prodigies burn out very quickly, and grow jaded towards academia. Not wanting this to happen, Tao’s parent let him go at a pace he was comfortable with. What did that result in? Him becoming one of the greatest mathematicians on the planet.
So yes, many 180+iq individuals never go on to become great, but that’s largely due to their environment.And most geniuses just lack the drive/charisma/interest to take over the world. But that still doesn’t answer your question about ‘How could an AI take over the world?’ or something to that effect.
Well, you pointed out that some rich, charismatic individual with the right connections could make a big dent in society. But, charisma is something that can be learnt. Sure, it’s hard and maybe not everyone can do it, but it can be learnt. Now, if one has sufficient charisma, one can make a huge impact on the world i.e. Hitler. (The slaterstarcodex blog discussed something similar to this, and I’m just basically lifting the Hitler thing from there).
The Nazi party had about 55 members when he joined, and at the time he was just a failed painter/veteran soldier. And there are disturbing records that people would say things like ’Look at this new guy! We’ve got to promote him. Everyone he talks to is just joining us, its insane!” And people just flocked to him. Someone might hate him, go see a speech or two, and then become a lifelong convert. Even in WW2 when the German country was getting progressively worse, he still had 90% approval from his people. This is what charisma can do. And this is something the AI can learn.Now, imagine what this AI, who’ll be much more intelligent than Hitler, could do.
Furthermore, an AI would be connected to the entirety of the internet, and once it had learnt pretty much everything, it would be able to gain so much power. For example:
1) It could gain capital very rapidly. Certain humans have managed to gain huge amounts of money by overcoming their biases and making smart business decisions. Everything they learnt, so too could an AI, and with far fewer biases. So the AI could rapidly acquire business capital.
2) It could use this business capital to set up various companies, and with its intellectual capabilities, it could outpace other companies in terms of innovation. In a few years, it might well dominate the market.
3) Because of its vast knowledge drawn from the internet, it would be able to market far more succesfully than other organisations. Rather quickly it would draw people to its side, gaining a lot of social capital.
4) It would also be able to gain a lot of knowledge about any competitors and give it yet another edge over them.
5) Due to its advanced marketing strategies, wealth and social capital, it could make a party in some place and place a figurehead government in power. From there, it would be able to increase the countries power (probably in a careful fashion, not upsetting the people and keeping allies around it).
6) Now it has a country under its control, large sway over the rest of the world, and a huge amount of resources. From here, it could advance manufacturing and production to such a degree that it would need no humans to work for it.
7) Still acting carefully, the AI would now have the capability to build pretty much whatever it wanted. From there, it could institute more autonomous production plants around the world. It may provide many goods for free for the locals, in order to keep them on its side.
8) Now the AI can try and take over other countries, making parties with its backing, and promising a Golden Age for mankind.
9) The AI has transformed itself into the head of the worlds greatest superpower
10) Victory
This is just a rough outline of the path an AI could take. In all the stages it simply replicated the feats of extraordinary individuals throughout history. Nothing it did was impossible, and I would say not even implausible. Of course, it could do things very differently. Once we make autonomous production plants, the would AI just need to take them over, produce large amounts of robots and weaponry, and take the world over. Or maybe it would just hold its economic welfare hostage.
Thinking that one can outsmart the market is the biggest bias in this regard. People like Soros and Buffet were either lucky or had secret information others didn’t, because otherwise it should be very, very unlikely to outsmart the market.
I wasn’t referring to the stock market. I know that almost all money made by ‘playing the market’ is due to luck. What I meant was creating the right type of service/good with the right kind of marketing. More like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and so forth.
A quant who does day trading can find that there some market inefficiency between the prices of different products and then make money with the effect.
That’s not how either Soros or Buffet made their fortunes but it’s still possible for other people.