[deleted] OP t1_j4ff8ay wrote on January 15, 2023 at 9:13 AM

Reply to comment by PhilosophusFuturum in What void are people trying to fill with transhumanism? by [deleted]

> -Game Theory: Many countries like the US, China, UK, India, Israel, Japan, etc., are all working on researching Machine Learning. And an AGI is absolutely crucial to national security. Therefore a ban on ML research is entirely unrealistic. And since every country understands that such a ban won’t work, they would all continue to research ML even if there was an international ban on it.

Glad you bring game theory into this, because this is why I do not view transhumanism as a solution. Heh. My opinion on this topic is a little bit esoteric even around these parts.

Basically... Pareto principle is why we have wealth distributions that are hugely unequal, but even more unequal at the top. It's why we have kings. It's why India and China are way more populous than the rest of the world.

This is also what will happen with AI agents. Certain AI or human agents will have significantly more control, and that control will snowball. We already see this with giant tech companies now dominating the landscape.

If an AI is not a world dominating AI, then it by nature cannot suppress other AI from being created to surpass it, and another will surpass it. If it is ASI, it has the power to dominate the world, whether or not it wields that power to do so.

It'll be significantly more stratified, not less. Basically, transhumanism is like putting your mind at the whim of whatever AI is at the top of this hierarchy, whether orn ot that AI does something.

PhilosophusFuturum t1_j4fg510 wrote on January 15, 2023 at 9:25 AM

In theory the growth of the ivory tower that the elites are on should rapidly outpace that of the peasants because they hold the ever-expanding means of power. But the one asset the elites have that is truly ever accelerating passed the peasants is their wealth, not technology. In fact, technology is the great equalizer.

For example, your average middle-class person in the developed world today has a higher QoL than a king in the Middle Ages, and that’s entirely thanks to technology. Likewise, the QoL gap between a modern middle-class person and an oligarch is smaller than that of a medieval peasant and medieval king, despite the lifestyle of a modern oligarch being so much more lavish than that of a medieval king.

This also applies to offensive technology. For example, Europe was able to take over all of Africa despite the invaders being a small army compared to the imperialists tribes of Africa. That’s because they had guns. And when Africans got guns; they were able to push the Europeans out. The only African country that avoided colonization was Ethiopia, and it’s because they convinced the UK and Italy to give them guns. This is because guns rapidly closed the technology gap, even if the guns of the invaders were still very superior.

The same logic applies to ASIs. Sure there may be an ASI that is so great that no ASI could surpass it, but it doesn’t mean lesser ASIs can’t be created that could potentially kill it.

On that note, I am a lot more concerned about civilizational destablemeant than than I am of super-authoritarianism. With increasingly better tools, people could easily create dangerous ASIs and super viruses that huge governmental institutions might not be able to contend with.