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Skip a few generations and the machine will build itself. There’s no need for it to take lasers exploding tin to generate ultra Violet to etch patterns to make

Skip a few generations and the machine will build itself. There’s no need for it to take lasers exploding tin to generate ultra Violet to etch patterns to make intelligence, humans don’t grow brains that way or spend billions on fabs and power plants to produce children. How it gets from here to there is a handwave, though.

rsanheim 2y ago
That’s a pretty enormous handwave.
- ben_w 2y ago
  If it wasn't, it would've already happened.
- jodrellblank 2y ago
  It is, but it isn't once we're already handwaving "superintelligence". Problem with funding a new fab or new power stations? It can invent a thing worth a lot of money, or out-gamble, or swindle or steal it. Problem with getting things done? It can pay people lots of money to do them. That covers a huge number of cases of geting from "here" to "there" if such a path is possible at all.
nonameiguess 2y ago
There's no guarantee it's possible. Self-replicating molecules don't necessarily have to be hydrocarbons suspended in water inside of a semi-permeable lipid membrane, but that particular solution came about because of conditions that are needed: - Some multipolar molecules that could attract or repel each other and initiate both hydrogen bonds and covalent bonds. - Movement through some kind of medium not as chaotic as gas. - A boundary between self and everything else. Industrial processes to create machines don't lend themselves to this kind of bottom-up model as they now stand. It's not at all clear that etched silicon at all is the right medium of computation if we want it to be self-replicating. Coming up with something else is a hell of an ask and a hell of a handwave, though. It would also entail getting rid of the entire impetus of Moore's law and the reason futurolists like this ever thought there would be a singularity in the first place. Other than transistor density on a silicion die, I'm not sure any other technology has ever shown consistent long-term exponential growth at some reasonably fixed exponent.

rsanheim 2y ago

That’s a pretty enormous handwave.

ben_w 2y ago
If it wasn't, it would've already happened.
jodrellblank 2y ago
It is, but it isn't once we're already handwaving "superintelligence". Problem with funding a new fab or new power stations? It can invent a thing worth a lot of money, or out-gamble, or swindle or steal it. Problem with getting things done? It can pay people lots of money to do them. That covers a huge number of cases of geting from "here" to "there" if such a path is possible at all.

nonameiguess 2y ago

There's no guarantee it's possible. Self-replicating molecules don't necessarily have to be hydrocarbons suspended in water inside of a semi-permeable lipid membrane, but that particular solution came about because of conditions that are needed: - Some multipolar molecules that could attract or repel each other and initiate both hydrogen bonds and covalent bonds. - Movement through some kind of medium not as chaotic as gas. - A boundary between self and everything else. Industrial processes to create machines don't lend themselves to this kind of bottom-up model as they now stand. It's not at all clear that etched silicon at all is the right medium of computation if we want it to be self-replicating. Coming up with something else is a hell of an ask and a hell of a handwave, though. It would also entail getting rid of the entire impetus of Moore's law and the reason futurolists like this ever thought there would be a singularity in the first place. Other than transistor density on a silicion die, I'm not sure any other technology has ever shown consistent long-term exponential growth at some reasonably fixed exponent.