Breaking this down a bit:
-Ten times faster does not help people driving vehicles that much, unless they can use the time to multi-task.
-For people who carry things around to complete their job, or manipulate objects, we have to decide whether they are physically able to do those actions faster, or are they just able to think faster.
Presumably, we're holding physical running, walking and carrying speeds the same, and people are thinking a lot faster. Thus, people can plan their farming enterprise much more effectively, but they still need a lot of people to actually pick the crops.
In this scenario, we would end up with a lot of people who have an expert-level mastery of many professions. Since it does not take much time to learn anymore, a lot of people would be MD, JD, MBA, triple PhDs, know how to operate dozens of pieces of equipment, know ten languages and be able to design and build their own house or office.
Apparently, all of that happens for some people before their 10th birthday-but what did this speed-up mean for their emotional development? Do they start working at 5 years old? Do we end up with very expert people who still cannot manage their temperament, thereby making them very effective threats?
One good question is the degree to which speed translates into quality-how many more people would be able to write a coherent 100-page document with this new ability? Not clear.
Some would use all of the additional time to play 10x more video games, watch 10x more soap operas or to delve deeper into Sufi mysticism. A segment of the population would use these gifts well, others would not.
Team leaders frequently would do much more of the work of their projects themselves, since after their interdisciplinary education they would not require specialists for many task. However, when necessary, these leaders could have fifty people reporting directly to them, rather than just 5.
Ten times faster communication between people would allow them to correct many social mistakes prior to damage, to make very detailed business contracts, and sometimes to avoid armed conflict. Critical relationships where both parties have an incentive toward preserving the relationship would improve.
There would be more time to make sure that you were buying the right product, and more time to make sure that your sales pitch was as effective as possible. However, sometimes that would only mean 20% more sales resulting in a 15% better product purchased.
The queues in store check-out lines evaporate, and wait times on phone interactions with businesses and governments also fall. An array of telepresent services becomes possible.
At the same time, however, our ability to search for new relationships would also improve.
In the event of business competition, some strategic advantages would multiply, others would be neutralized. The business who can make purchases for 3% less has a much greater advantage and defeats equal competition much more quickly.
Identifying your adversaries before they identify you would become extremely important, because you could set up a multi-step plan to defeat them quite quickly, or serve ten people with just a slightly better product where you otherwise would've only gotten one.
This is part of a weekly reading group on Nick Bostrom's book, Superintelligence. For more information about the group, and an index of posts so far see the announcement post. For the schedule of future topics, see MIRI's reading guide.
Welcome. This week we discuss the fifth section in the reading guide: Forms of superintelligence. This corresponds to Chapter 3, on different ways in which an intelligence can be super.
This post summarizes the section, and offers a few relevant notes, and ideas for further investigation. Some of my own thoughts and questions for discussion are in the comments.
There is no need to proceed in order through this post, or to look at everything. Feel free to jump straight to the discussion. Where applicable and I remember, page numbers indicate the rough part of the chapter that is most related (not necessarily that the chapter is being cited for the specific claim).
Reading: Chapter 3 (p52-61)
Summary
Notes
In-depth investigations
If you are particularly interested in these topics, and want to do further research, these are a few plausible directions, some inspired by Luke Muehlhauser's list, which contains many suggestions related to parts of Superintelligence. These projects could be attempted at various levels of depth.
How to proceed
This has been a collection of notes on the chapter. The most important part of the reading group though is discussion, which is in the comments section. I pose some questions for you there, and I invite you to add your own. Please remember that this group contains a variety of levels of expertise: if a line of discussion seems too basic or too incomprehensible, look around for one that suits you better!
Next week, we will talk about 'intelligence explosion kinetics', a topic at the center of much contemporary debate over the arrival of machine intelligence. To prepare, read Chapter 4, The kinetics of an intelligence explosion (p62-77). The discussion will go live at 6pm Pacific time next Monday 20 October. Sign up to be notified here.