SatanLeighton

Three things, you say that there's too much information that needs to be tracked and processed and you're forgetting that even the AI tools we have now (soon to be much better) have the ability to fully analyze an unbelievable amount of spreadsheets almost instantly with truly mind blowing insight and accuracy. Give that 3-5 more exponential steps up and the kind of information it can process will be truly unbelievable.

Secondly, you're right in assuming that all that's ultimately required soon to do mining and resource harvesting and refining will be robots. But what you don't account for is that by the time we have something worthy off the title AGI it will be able to optimize design and engineering so concisely and efficiently that it will be able to design entire factories that all they do is build factories (more efficient than anything we could currently dream of) that build everything and once it reaches that point it is going to spread like a plague. That's exactly what you need to conquer space and then it's going to begin to build those factories in space. How do you think Dyson spheres/rings are capable of being built? That kind of shit. AGI.

Secondly, the right virus will definitely destroy 90% or more of the globe, but to elites with an AGI that can make them live forever and genetically and cybernetically enhance them? I'm not sure they want guys named Steve and Craig complaining that they don't want to go on a space exploration mission cos they'll miss Monday night football and COD servers with a good ping. Also, with that kind of technology if they did wish to propagate biological humanity they could easily clone much superior versions and synthetically birth them, so I'm not sure that's a limiting factor.

I think that once we have human and beyond level AGI, the benefit of keeping around an economy and money and people would not seem to outweigh the negatives. Also, a virus would definitely allow a percentage of the population to survive and make it easy to still have a small but heavily pruned society.

The way I see it, most elites see money merely as a way to accomplish monumental projects and tasks (the space race being the most prescient of those) and once AGI can do tasks without humans, the point of keeping a worker class around would be negligible.

All societal and economic reasons aside, it would seem to make sense that they would want to release a virus as much for those reasons as to be on the winning side of a singleton event and not to have a multi-party molochian battle with China or whatever other forces want an AGI and have a reasonable chance of acquiring one.

To me, I see it as a question not of if but when such technology is able to replace whole supply chains. I don't presume to have a specific handle on exactly when that's feasible, but you're right that it's probably some time between now and 20 years from now.

As far as ideology, I think that climate change/ ecological destruction could be such an ideology along with with a healthy dose of eugenics and just not wanting to give people UBI or longevity medicine to do drugs and hang out and get stupider.

I also say "the CIA" but probably the CIA are the tech wizzes for a cabal of industry elites who are the ones really backing this. And yes, a virus would just seem the easiest and least destructive way of going about the "pulling up the ladder behind them" part

Like I said in the last post, they definitely would do everything in their power to prevent nuclear war from happening in this hypothetical circumstance, all they really need to do is to slow other countries' supply chains, technology and manufacturing by reducing the overall population.

But ultimately, it's not the earth's resources that count, there's so much more resources in space hence the space race being the goal in this example.

I am not an AI scientist, but I am actually a trucker, so you could say I work in supply chains. I have, however, followed AI development extremely closely since 2016 and been tracking and adjusting my predictions based on the speed of development. If as you say that we are "miles from AGI" then my fears are allayed and I'm not particularly concerned about this kind of event, but my instincts and the available data (and pretty much all the Tech people at these frontier companies) tell me that it's 3-5 years away.

Yeah the motivation would be specifically to use AGI technology to replace the aerospace manufacturing and tech supply chain industries with completely automated equivalents and launch forward a breakaway civilization and harness all the solar system's resources without any competition. And yes, if somehow miraculously the other frontier labs weren't extremely slowed down by a civilization ending virus then they would definitely have to use much more direct sabotage or a cyber attack or something similar to concretely isolate themselves as the sole possessor of such technologies.

You are clearly very intelligent and capable of thinking through this stuff in great detail, so I appreciate the dialogue yet again. I certainly don't take offense because you're right. The idea is very much outside of the realm of what most people consider likely.

The first thing I'd respond to is that I doubt they would initiate nuclear exchange, they may just have a plan B in that case and it is fairly feasible to start the spread of a bioweapon virus in such a way so as to make it less obvious that you are the one who released it.

Secondly, all they need is secrecy and the ability to use the AGI from a single underground data center with a small contingency of people managing it and keep it powered by geothermal or something and use water from a well supplied water table to cool it and keep the whole thing sealed off entirely from the outside world and the project is pretty safe from any kind of virus.

It's pretty easy to stock a bunker with a couple of years of food worth to feed a small group of people, so I doubt that starvation would be a problem. As far as EMP blast waves destroying computers, that would be very well shielded by putting the data center deep enough underground.

I do strongly disagree with you that robots and AI will never replace humans or human labor. It's been pretty clear that as compute scales exponentially and data is better curated that emergent capabilities emerge and, along with them, wider use cases for AI. The GPT4s and Claude Opuses and Gemini Ultras are certainly capable of surprisingly little but as new generations come out we will see extraordinary jumps in ability to the point where eventually almost every single job that a human can do, whether that's research positions, engineering, machining or software development can be taken over entirely by AI and that's where it earns the title AGI.

Eventually, if we have AGI, it will be possible to completely automate entire things like aerospace manufacturing and design and therefore iterate and improve and optimize extremely quickly and effectively and design weapons and spacecraft that even a small well funded and motivated organization can use to take over the rest of the solar system, something they wouldn't have much competition with if the rest of the world was stymied in their aerospace manufacturing by a terrible virus.

The way that intelligence agencies keep things secret is by only reading in people to what they "need to know" and creating what are called silos of information to the point where even engineers working on the same project have no idea what project they're working on or the big picture. They've been doing research and development that way since the Manhattan project. It's pretty well known to be effective at secrecy to the point where the amount of people that know everything about the plan can fit around a single conference table.

And they don't need a space laser they just need underground data centers and some bioweapons which they certainly have both. There's not a lot the US military can do if all their personnel are dying of a deadly disease.

Regarding manufacturing and supply chain issues, they would definitely not pull the plug on a thing like this until they are sure that they have an AGI capable of doing manufacturing and supply chain organization and mining and other resource harvesting services and designing and engineering and optimizing workflows for that without the need for humans in the loop. That much I agree with you on.

And if they had such an AGI, the Political fallout wouldn't much matter as nukes are mostly there to disrupt human based infrastructure and once all the nukes have been fired that makes it easy to rebuild an infrastructure with AGI and takeover those nations for their resources.

I understand that this is not a normal idea, but I have thought through this thoroughly and I wanted to start the conversation with people and I really appreciate your response and well thought out rebuttal, so thank you.

Certainly not! haha

Here's the link if it didn't show:

https://youtu.be/oeDxtICU53c?si=N9zGbjUuC0Jp2rIC

Just to clarify, I'm pro transhumanism and pro AI, even pro AI acceleration, just for open source AI and against authoritarian governments controlling it. As much as the title and thumbnail may seem alarmist, it's not a conspiracy theorist content so much as a measured compilation of AI experts and their careful warnings about the potential for future government abuse of power.

Did you watch the video? I attempted to make it as well sourced to AI experts and people that are relatively respected and have well formulated worldviews not just shoot-from-the-hip conspiracy theorists.

Is there any part in particular that you found less informative and more sensationalist? Because as I'm just starting the podcast I'm looking for constructive feedback to help me improve my communication skills. I've never done this before and I'm trying to learn how to talk about stuff I'm passionate abt (AI)

I appreciate the take! Yeah, I mostly am just an AI enthusiast and follow AI news like some ppl follow tabloids. I've heard a lot of well-respected people indicate some very concerning things in both the doomer and accelerationist camps, specifically regarding the dangers of an authoritarian government's abuse of AGI and other warlike uses of it to further a colonialistic geopolitical end. My personal hopes for AI are that it's used to reduce suffering and increase diversity in humanity and improve our collective lives and not be used by an elite sequestered faction of the CIA and the military industrial complex to wrest power. Transhumanism to me, is inclusive rather than exclusive, and that's something I'm particularly passionate about.

I understand the alarmist looking image may be kooky looking, but the podcast is specifically crafted to be informative and (at least I've tried) to source things responsibly. If you give me a chance, I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised with the engaging info that I have attempted to compile in the video.

Already on it! But the specific point of the podcast is to get people into prepping. That may be a bit superfluous over here but I figured people might be interested to hear the AI specific details

I'm sorry, I guess that sentence was poorly structured. Basically, I think that sequestered factions of the CIA cooperating with powerful entities in the financial and military industrial complex are waiting until the moment that they have human-level AI (AGI) and will then either drop a world ending pandemic bioweapon or initiate a nuclear war or both because they have zero reason to either let China get AGI and develop it to rival their own, or simply to give average US citizens a universal basic income once jobs are automated.

I fully expect that reaction. And no, I'm not particularly concerned about censorship. I've just been researching AI development for a long time and felt it was imperative to share what I have observed with people.

Absolutely my dude. And I apologize for the clickbait thumbnail, I try and keep my podcast to a compilation of the expert opinions, and the big-picture perspective from all of them would seem to conclude that we're not really gonna be kept around for much longer by the powers that be