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Comment by proc0 | Hacker News Reader

Depends on the cost. If it's very cheap I would immediately start a few startups, ideas are endless and I don't even need to have ideas. This would be proportional to how cheap it is and how many agents I get access to at once.

Of course, realistically it would not be cheap just based on demand, let alone the resources it uses, which I think is the real reason why it won't replace as many jobs as people fear. The answer all along is going to be that humans are cheaper to employ. I suspect that this will be the case for several years as the technology matures and this should give countries extra time to adapt.

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Not everyone is cost-constrained. By the time you could get to your agents, your life may have already been obsoleted. If you let it, actual AGI can discover and execute its own path to maximum proliferation almost by definition...

It's not even clear we would immediately know it has happened, because this sort of power could corrupt its owners to a degree that they decide what's good for you in your stead, before any public release. Collab with the financial sector and own everything, including your government. Peter Thiel is supplying you with a robot army to match nominal ownership with the means to defend it.

Musk et al. are showing how you can skip a political career or mandate, if you have sufficient money, and openly get away with it. Might as well continue on this path until total control is achieved. Just gotta keep the normies (or bureaucracy) from revolting while you do it.

Not saying this will happen, but it's a plausible timeline IMO (in the case sufficient AGI is achievable before we overstretch ourselves). Doesn't even have to mean life will be shit or end, just that we won't get a say in it. And then you could get an agent to declutter your files or renovate your house, etc.

I was assuming it would be instantly available to everyone. In reality as you imply it will absolutely be handicapped for wider usage, and this will be after some time once whoever has it does everything they can to get an advantage. I suspect the US military is already on it, and has likely struck a deal with all relevant companies such that it would maximize its chances of getting it first (and same with China).

So I think there is likely to be a military conflict once the technology is achieved and that's how the public will know about it. It might not be a hot war but maybe a cyber war with power grids and information systems being attacked, and this would escalate until whoever AGI is successfully used like an army of virtual hackers to completely destroy the infrastructure of a country. At that point it's more or less like a nuclear weapon and the winner will get to dictate the proliferation of the technology within the new world order.

In short because AGI is a threat at the military level, there is likely to be a race towards it and some kind of conflict as multiple nations might try to prevent the other from acquiring it.

Now that you mention it, the military power struggle seems even scarier than the economic singularity...

more like how google has been free to search, same way. Let the company eat the cost.

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