Power satellites dedicated to AI are a thought. Heat sinks are a problem, but there is a 1.5 GW heat sink about 5 minutes into this video.https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVEkZkINrJaA

"electricity required to refine all the gasoline"

I have worked in a refinery, they don't use much electricity.

I suspect that an AI takeover happened at Tabby's star.

All we can see is shadows, but the bigest one is over 400 times the area of the Earth. It is way out, 7 AU or so, but even that far from the star, it is intercepting 1.4 million times the energy humans use. And the structure is cold like it was optimized for computation. Is it a data center full of uploaded aliens or possibly the substrate for AIs? Whatever, they have spread out to at least 24 stars.

I ran Win2k for ten years. Utterly reliable, it would run for months.

Long before Dick wrote on this subject,

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

Simulacron-3 (1964) (also published as Counterfeit World), by Daniel F. Galouye, is an American science fiction novel featuring an early literary description of a simulated reality

This was required reading for everyone connected with The Matrix. I read it when it came out.

There is an amusing history related to this novel. At the Artificial Life conference in 1986, Hans Moravec was talking to me between sessions, waving around a manuscript copy of Mind Children and rapping about the ever-falling cost of computation. I stopped him and said, "Hans do you realize how unlikely it is that this is the first time we have had this conversation?"

Hans looked totally blank, so I explained that eventually we could simulate the past and like the SCA or the Civil War enactors, we would do it over and over, making it most unlikely that this was the the first time for this conversation. Hans went away sandbagged by the idea and a few years later wrote "Pigs in Cyberspace" (a takeoff on the Muppet show). I think (without any proof) that that's where Nick Bostrom picked up the idea.

I intended the comment to Hans as a joke because there is no way to tell if you are in a simulation.

"okay with being a slave"

17 years ago I wrote a story https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.terasemjournals.or... The Clinic Seed which featured an AI. The AI, Suskulan "enjoyed serving the people of the tata and was extremely good at it."

The ending has a twist to it.

I think AGI is inevitable and I don't think humans are smart enough to write meaningful regulations.

The alternatives are AGI running things or humans. Humans have psychological traits such as being unjustifiably optimistic about winning a war which AGI should not have. Consider Putin and Hamas for recent examles.

It's sort of like driving. When the automatic systems get better than humans, we should not fear them.

"Our current system - capitalism - creates feedback loops where wealth builds power and power builds wealth, and poverty removes power and lack of power increases poverty."

And yet the number of people living in poverty has gone down over the decades.

There is another feedback loop, not active now but for the 400 years in the UK before 1800, the wealthy had twice as many surviving children as the poor.

I have known Eliezer for a bit over 20 years. I used to post on his sl4 mailing list. Before that I was deeply connected with Eric Drexler, knew him from the space colony days, and was a reviewer of his first book. They are both deeply connected to the Singularity, where technical progress goes vertical through others anticipated them. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F... We seem to be early stages of the singularity.

Eliezer's concerns for humanity are reasonable given the uncertain future of AI. I take a more relaxed view; social and economic forces make it unlikely that we can do anything about it. Certainly, the idea of a WW II effort to destroy the chip plants is not going to fly. Humanity may not survive AI, but if not we may give rise to something better or at least interesting that may remember us.

Or the AIs may take care of us the way we take care of cats and dogs.

"Race does exist, it's just that it's a social construct without strong biological correlation. "

That's the politically correct story. But if you measure by economic success it is clear that racial background does make a big difference. The reason is obvious, certain groups underwent a vicious selection for the psychological traits that resulted in wealth. I.e., for 40-something generations in the UK, the wealthy had twice as many surviving children as the poor. The same thing happened in China, not as intense, but for a longer time.

This means nothing when considering a single person, but it does when considering racial groups.

And it will not matter very long into the future either.

That's really stupid. COVID-19 is a coronavirus, not an influenza virus.

"Do you know for a certainty who they are providing that information to?"

Anyone who shares DNA with you. Typically 1500 people.

23andMe has pulled the most useful features because of hacking concerns. I am not sure what the point is. For finding relatives, the data has to be at least partly public. I don't see what value a list of my 4th cousins would have to anyone. My DNA might well be of interest to insurance companies, but not for long if the current work on life extension works out.

I am a bit surprised that Boeing does not have everyone who works on these planes wear Go-Pro cameras. I suppose they could be reviewed by AIs. In any case, who left the bolts out or failed to tighten them would be on record.

This makes no sense because there is no treatment for PASF, and for that matter, there are no known health effects either.

I suppose eating a lot of activated charcoal might reduce the level.

"we cannot satisfy the rich.”

Gregory Clark makes the case that genetic selection is behind the open-ended desire for wealth. For about 40 generations in the UK, the wealthy had twice as many surviving children as the poor. This intense, downright vicious, selection enriches the psychological traits in the population for accumulating wealth.

Clark mentions at the end of the article that the same thing happened to the Chinese.

There really are racial differences and plain old genetic selection is behind them.