From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon May 13 2002 - 23:11:43 MDT
Eugen writes
> Humans do not register in an ecology build on postbiological principles
> (unless protected, most people will die in the course of hours/days).
Thus it's *very* important that AIs be developed who have a built-in
incentive to be reasonably nice to humans. Especially on scores like
this, I hope that endeavors such as Eliezer's succeed grandly.
> Going into space is absolutely required in your quest for lebensraum,
> since you're bottlenecked by your rate of growth on a planetary surface.
To stand back a sec, everything depends on how steep or extreme the
S will be, of course. But the most thought-provoking assumptions
point to an AI chewing on tons of material during its first minutes
in an effort to develop further its own intelligence. It seems
inescapable that during these minutes matter very far removed (on the
order of kilometers away) won't be relevant to its progress. (Recall
that light goes about a foot in a nanosecond, and a few kilometers
will seem far away indeed to the AI.)
Thus I find inexplicable your remark about growth being handicapped
by confinement to a planetary surface. So I'd say that even after
the first minutes---during which the AI reaches unimaginable advancement
---any off planet raw materials would seem hopelessly distant for its
use. (Of course, it will conquer all that matter by and by---it's just
that the central few meters or kilometers will---perhaps always---be
at the core of development.)
This leads to the picture that ten years ago I talked about with friends
that I called "The Wind from Earth": until the top of a technological
sigmoid is reached here, Earth technology will rule. (I'm sure that
many have had the same idea.) Distant matter---as close as Neptune or
as distant as galactic center---will never catch up, but will feel
a technological gradient flowing from Earth. Life for them will be
a constant struggle trying to determine just how subversive are the
latest extremely advanced algorithms (patterns) sent from Earth.
The same reasoning could apply to even within a few meters of the
"hot spot" as you call it. Some people, like John Smart, are convinced
that it might be worse than that, and that more and more extreme
processing will occur on yet smaller scales. (I've never really
understood why it is supposed that physics allows unlimited
processing at sufficiently small scales. We hardly have any
evidence for that, do we?)
But what I'm talking about could happen: gobs of matter hundreds
or thousands of meters from the center might also have to struggle
to keep their identities from being obliterated. (At this point
some will invariably ask, "Why? What motivates them?" The answer
is *evolution*, of course, which is the answer to almost everything.
Fluctuations that are able to resist identity-destroying changes
by definition are those that survive.)
Lee
P.S. Lee Corbin intends to remain a fluctuation that resists
identity destroying changes! I hope that all of you survive too.
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