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dlthomas comments on Thoughts on the Singularity Institute (SI) - Less Wrong
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Scaling it up is absolutely dependent on currently nonexistent information. This is not my area, but a lot of my work revolves around control of kinesin and dynein (molecular motors that carry cargoes via microtubule tracks), and the problems are often similar in nature.
Essentially, we can make small pieces. Putting them together is an entirely different thing. But let's make this more general.
The process of discovery has, so far throughout history, followed a very irregular path. 1- there is a general idea 2- some progress is made 3- progress runs into an unpredicted and previously unknown obstacle, which is uncovered by experimentation. 4- work is done to overcome this obstacle. 5- goto 2, for many cycles, until a goal is achieved - which may or may not be close to the original idea.
I am not the one who is making positive claims here. All I'm saying is that what has happened before is likely to happen again. A team of human researchers or an AGI can use currently available information to build something (anything, nanoscale or macroscale) to the place to which it has already been built. Pushing it beyond that point almost invariably runs into previously unforeseen problems. Being unforeseen, these problems were not part of models or simulations; they have to be accounted for independently.
A positive claim is that an AI will have a magical-like power to somehow avoid this - that it will be able to simulate even those steps that haven't been attempted yet so perfectly, that all possible problems will be overcome at the simulation step. I find that to be unlikely.
You did in the original post I responded to.
Strictly speaking, that is a positive claim. It is not one I disagree with, for a proper translation of "likely" into probability, but it is also not what you said.
"It can't deduce how to create nanorobots" is a concrete, specific, positive claim about the (in)abilities of an AI. Don't misinterpret this as me expecting certainty - of course certainty doesn't exist, and doubly so for this kind of thing. What I am saying, though, is that a qualified sentence such as "X will likely happen" asserts a much weaker belief than an unqualified sentence like "X will happen." "It likely can't deduce how to create nanorobots" is a statement I think I agree with, although one must be careful not use it as if it were stronger than it is.
That is not a claim I made. "X will happen" implies a high confidence - saying this when you expect it is, say, 55% likely seems strange. Saying this when you expect it to be something less than 10% likely (as I do in this case) seems outright wrong. I still buckle my seatbelt, though, even though I get in a wreck well less than 10% of the time.
This is not to say I made no claims. The claim I made, implicitly, was that you made a statement about the (in)capabilities of an AI that seemed overconfident and which lacked justification. You have given some justification since (and I've adjusted my estimate down, although I still don't discount it entirely), in amongst your argument with straw-dlthomas.
You are correct. I did not phrase my original posts carefully.
I hope that my further comments have made my position more clear?