[top256]

"They're describing reality" - No, they're making predictions about the future. If AGI requires 30 years of compute improvements as you say, then it's not reality, it's a forecast contingent on those 30 years of development continuing unimpeded.

As for "oppressive regime", we already do this for nuclear and biotech, and most people find it quite palatable! Nuclear materials are tightly controlled globally. Cloning humans is illegal almost everywhere. We've had the knowledge for both for decades, yet basement nukes and basement human clones aren't happening.

I'm not saying we should make it illegal, I'm just saying there are more gray areas than what's generally accounted for.

[naasking]

> No, they're making predictions about the future. If AGI requires 30 years of compute improvements as you say, then it's not reality, it's a forecast contingent on those 30 years of development continuing unimpeded.

The idea that you can develop "good" information technology without enabling the creation of "bad" information technology is pure fantasy, and if your idea is actually that we could halt the progress of information technology wholesale, then that's laughable, sorry to say. Hence the inevitability.

> As for "oppressive regime", we already do this for nuclear and biotech, and most people find it quite palatable!

You mean we do this for raw materials that have inherent scarcity because they are somewhat rare, difficult to mine, and difficult to refine? And you think this natural scarcity is somehow comparable to natural abundance that follows from digital information that can be trivially copied at perfect fidelity?

Furthermore, you've misunderstood what was meant by "oppressive regime". The same technologies that allow us to email each other, make family photo albums and forecast the weather or the stock market are what also enable AI. There is no way in which to suppress AI without also suppressing these other benign uses that everyone enjoys and that enable considerable productivity. This is not comparable to the technology and raw materials for nuclear weapons.

> We've had the knowledge for both for decades, yet basement nukes and basement human clones aren't happening.

You seem awfully confident about declaring the non-existence of something that's inherently underground and thus difficult to measure.

But let's make the comparison of AI to cloning more apt: how confident would you be that cloning won't happen once the knowledge of how to construct artificial wombs is discovered? Now reconsider those probabilities about if such wombs also easy to construct with readily available materials. That's the reality of information technology.