alt Hacker News>the main question for me is, why is this a war?
It's a war because the hinted promise behind the hype that the first organization to reach some as-yet-entirely-theoretical AGI that can bootstrap itself to godlike capabilities will then Install Planetary Overlord* and rule the world as near-deities themselves, with the rest of the (surviving) human race as their slaves.
I think it's a nonsensical idea, but that's the relevant driver.
* Coined by SF auther Charles Stross in The Jennifer Morgue (2006)
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> I think it's a nonsensical idea, but that's the relevant driver.
Nice to hear from an optimist sometimes, but it’s hard to be one when meat compute substrate can do all those amazing things in a 4U package on 20W and you extrapolate to silicon
This is a war because the media says it's a war. The media says it's a war because AI companies are paying them to say it's a war [0]. When AGI comes the threat won't be from which primate turned it on, but from how well AGI is aligned with humanity. All of the war talk is to distract from the alignment problem and instead force investment in hardware infrastructure.
[0] https://www.wired.com/story/super-pac-backed-by-openai-and-p...
I will never comprehend why a godlike deity wouldnt just skip all the wetware bs with us humans and conquer some other celestial body to make paperclips.
>Planetary Overlord*
AGI is nice, yet not necessary. The orbit filled with Starlink descendants and datacenters will be the it. Anybody else wanting to get there would have to get permission. SpaceX/Musk have all the components for it to happen - from Starship to AI (including the army of robots on the ground). The governmental power/sovereignty of US will be used as a stepping stone (that is the strategy described in the Palantir's Karp's book "Technological Republic") for such global techno-feudal regime establishment.
Not everybody thinks it's nonsensical. Here's a different take:
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_Anyone_Builds_It,_Everyone_...