alt Hacker News> But if someone invents super intelligence, they can dominate new AI research, control global economies, fight much better, and all very quickly.
After reading "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies" I think this is not the correct take. If anyone creates ASI, it just means it's going to wipe everyone out, and it doesn't matter if China or the US do it first
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kelseyfrog • yesterday at 8:23 PM
If you were an American, wouldn't you prefer the US wiped you out rather than China?
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What does "dominate new AI research" really mean?
If AI develops enough to successfully out-perform people at highly intellectual tasks, why would being first matter? Why do we need "your" AI output when we can just ask our own for a similar result?
Why do people think about this like the Manhattan Project when it could just as easily be electrification? Sure, some people made a lot of money selling light bulbs. But we didn't all have to cower under the light of the One Original Bulb and hope its nominal owner blessed us with photons.
It just seems like arbitrage to me. You exploit a momentary imbalance in the distributed market. Why do people imagine some winner-take-all scenario? Where does the fantasy of exclusivity come from?
Is there any logical reason to believe AI advances will create a moat? Or is it just a story people tell themselves because it echoes the narrative of past advances? Are these people assuming society will grant them exclusive use just because their AI result came out a little earlier than another? Why would we ever consider giving copyright or patent rights to an AI output?
Arguably, it has all become "obvious" with ordinary skill in the art once you're just prompting AI for permutations like every Hollywood producer stereotype. "Let's make it like X but tweak Y". It's getting silly, almost like people are starting to think they should have exclusive rights to a handful of cards they were dealt at the poker table.