JoshuaZ comments on Exploitation and cooperation in ecology, government, business, and AI - Less Wrong

18 Post author: PhilGoetz 27 August 2010 02:27PM

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Comment author: jacob_cannell 28 August 2010 03:25:01AM 2 points [-]

Any artificial intelligence will have internal structure. Artificial intelligences, unlike humans, do not come in standard-sized reproductive units, walled off computationally; there is therefore no reason to expect individuals to exist in a post-AI society. But the bulk of the computation, and hence the bulk of the potential consciousness, will be within small, local units (due to the ubiquity of power-law distributions, the efficiency of fractal transport and communication networks, and the speed of light).

Physics is local. The speed of light is a derivative of that general principle. The local nature of our universe implies some strict limits on intelligence. Curiously, it looks like the only way to transcend these limits (to get a really powerful single intelligence/computer) is to collapse into a black hole, at which point you necessarily seal yourself off and give up any power in this universe. Interesting indeed.

But I have no idea how you leap to the conclusion "there is therefore no reason to expect individuals to exist in a post-AI society." Although partly because I dont know what a post-AI society is. I understand post-human .. but post-AI? Is that the next thing after the next thing? That seems to be getting ahead of ourselves.

Also, you seem to reach the conclusion that there will not necessarily be any individuality in the 'post-AI' future society, but then give several good reasons why such individuality may persist. (namely, speed of light, locality of physics)

But what is individuality? One could say that we are a global consciousness today with just the "bulk of computation" in "small, local units".

Comment author: JoshuaZ 29 August 2010 12:29:39AM 2 points [-]

Physics is local. The speed of light is a derivative of that general principle.

I'm not sure I follow this. A purely Newtonian universe with no gravity (to keep things simple) would have completely local laws and no speed of light limit.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 29 August 2010 03:12:42AM 1 point [-]

When you say "[a] purely Newtonian universe with no gravity," do you mean a universe in which light doesn't exist at all as a trivial counterexample to the above claim? Or do you actually have in mind some more complex point?

Comment author: JoshuaZ 29 August 2010 03:10:09PM 0 points [-]

I was interpreting speed of light in this context to mean that there's a maximum speed in general otherwise the claim becomes trivially false. In that regard, the claim isn't true and one could make a universe that was essentially Newtonian, had some sort of particle or wave that functioned like light that didn't move instantaneously but could move at different speeds. (Actually now that I've said that I have to wonder if the post I was replying to meant that locality implied that light always had a finite speed which is true.) I suspect that you can get a general result about a maximum speed if you insist on something slightly stronger than locality, by analogy to the distinction between continuous functions and uniformly continuous functions but I haven't thought out the details.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 29 August 2010 07:07:52PM 0 points [-]

Oh, I see. Thanks for the explanation.