On the one hand people take this topic very serious, the most important topic indeed, yet seem to be very relaxed about the only organisation involved in shaping the universe.
“The only organisation involved in shaping the universe”?!? WTF? These folks have precious little in terms of resources. They apparently haven’t even started coding yet. You yourself assign them a miniscule chance of succeeding at their project. How could they possibly be the “the only organisation involved in shaping the universe”?!?
Really? Even if they were working on a merely difficult problem, you would expect coding to be the very last step of the project. People don’t solve hard algorithmic problems by writing some code and seeing what happens. I wouldn’t expect an organization working optimally on AGI to write any code until after making some remarkable progress on the problem.
How could they possibly be the “the only organisation involved in shaping the universe”?!?
There could easily be no organization at all trying to deliberately control the long-term future of the human race; we’d just get whatever we happened to stumble into. You are certainly correct that there are many, many organizations which are involved in shaping our future; they just rarely think about the really long-term effects (I think this is what XiXiDu meant).
Really? Even if they were working on a merely difficult problem, you would expect coding to be the very last step of the project. People don’t solve hard algorithmic problems by writing some code and seeing what happens. I wouldn’t expect an organization working optimally on AGI to write any code until after making some remarkable progress on the problem.
IMO, there’s a pretty good chance of an existing organisation being involved with getting there first. The main problem with not having any working products is that it is challenging to accumulate resources—which are needed to hire researchers and programmers—which you need to fuel your self-improvement cycle.
Google, hedge funds, and security agencies have their self-improvement cycle already rolling—they are evidently getting better and better as time passes. That results in accumulated resources, which can be used to drive further development.
If you were a search company who aimed directly at a human-level search agent, you are now up against a gorilla with an android army who already has most of the pieces of the puzzle. Waiting until you have done all the relevant R+D is just not how software development works. You get up and running as fast as you can—or else someone else does that first—and eats your lunch.
“The only organisation involved in shaping the universe”?!? WTF? These folks have precious little in terms of resources. They apparently haven’t even started coding yet. You yourself assign them a miniscule chance of succeeding at their project. How could they possibly be the “the only organisation involved in shaping the universe”?!?
Really? Even if they were working on a merely difficult problem, you would expect coding to be the very last step of the project. People don’t solve hard algorithmic problems by writing some code and seeing what happens. I wouldn’t expect an organization working optimally on AGI to write any code until after making some remarkable progress on the problem.
There could easily be no organization at all trying to deliberately control the long-term future of the human race; we’d just get whatever we happened to stumble into. You are certainly correct that there are many, many organizations which are involved in shaping our future; they just rarely think about the really long-term effects (I think this is what XiXiDu meant).
IMO, there’s a pretty good chance of an existing organisation being involved with getting there first. The main problem with not having any working products is that it is challenging to accumulate resources—which are needed to hire researchers and programmers—which you need to fuel your self-improvement cycle.
Google, hedge funds, and security agencies have their self-improvement cycle already rolling—they are evidently getting better and better as time passes. That results in accumulated resources, which can be used to drive further development.
If you were a search company who aimed directly at a human-level search agent, you are now up against a gorilla with an android army who already has most of the pieces of the puzzle. Waiting until you have done all the relevant R+D is just not how software development works. You get up and running as fast as you can—or else someone else does that first—and eats your lunch.