Do you genuinely think that you can find such people “reliably”?
Unless you’re paying gratuitously, the only people who would reliably be interested in doing this would be underqualified randoms. Expect all benefit to be counteracted by the time it takes to get into a productive rhythm, at which point they’ll likely churn in a matter of weeks anyway.
I cannot imagine losing this game as the gatekeeper either, honestly.
Does anyone want to play against me? I’ll bet you $50 USD.
I play on lichess often. I can tell you that a lichess rating of 2900 absolutely corresponds to grandmaster level strength. It is rare for FMs or IMs to exceed a 2800 blitz rating. Most grandmasters hover around 2600-2800 blitz.
The discussion on attack surfaces is very useful, intuitive and accessible. If a better standalone resource doesn’t already exist, such a (perhaps expanded) list/discussion would be a useful intro for people unfamiliar with specific risks.
This was excruciatingly frustrating to read, well done.
This is well-reasoned, but I have difficulty understanding why this kind of takeover would be necessary from the perspective of a powerful, rational agent. Assuming AGI is indeed worth its name, it seems the period of time needed for it to "play nice" would be very brief.
AGI would be expected to be totally unconcerned with being "clean" in a takeover attempt. There would be no need to leave no witnesses, nor avoid rousing opposition. Once you have access to sufficient compute, and enough control over physical resources, why wait 10 years for humanity to be slowly, obliviously strangled?
You say there's "no need" for it to reveal that we are in conflict, but in many cases, concealing a conflict will prevent a wide range of critical, direct moves. The default is a blatant approach - concealing a takeover requires more effort and more time.
The nano-factories thing is a rather extreme version of this, but strategies like poisoning the air/water, building/stealing an army of drones, launching hundreds of nukes, etc., all seem like much more straightforward ways to cripple opposition, even with a relatively weak (99.99th percentile-human-level) AGI.
It could certainly angle for humanity to go out with a whimper, not a bang. But if a bang is quicker, why bother with the charade?
My first thought as well. IGF-1 exists for a reason. Growth is universally necessary for development, repair and function.
shift the
Minor edit - should be "shift in the"
It’s true any job can find unqualified applicants. What I’m saying is that this in particular relies on an untenably small niche of feasible candidates that will take an enormous amount of time to find/filter through on average.
Sure, you might get lucky immediately, but without a reliable way to find the “independently wealthy guy who’s an intellectual and is sufficiently curious about you specifically that he wants to sit silently and watch you for 8 hours a day for a nominal fee”, your recruitment time will, on average, be very long, especially in comparison to what would likely be a very short average tenure given the many countervailing opportunities that would be presented to such a candidate.
Yes, it’s possible in principle to articulate the perfect candidate, but my point is more about real-world feasibility.