[extropy-chat] Citizen Cyborg on If Uploads Come First

[Robin Hanson]

At 08:52 AM 4/1/2006, James Hughes wrote:
> > As one tries to use regulation to move further and further
> > away from those scenarios, the stronger become the incentives
> > to get around the regulation, and so the more Draconian the
> > monitoring and enforcement process must become.
>
>... This is the situation we face now with all the potentially apocalyptic
>threats - e.g. are we willing to create the regulatory and police
>apparatuses to ensure that we don't end up cracked in a future dawn by
>runaway AI(s) and uploads. If the kinds of surveillance and prevention
>it will take prevent apocalyptic risks are "Draconian" then hopefully we
>can have a public debate about what the trade-offs are between security
>and risk. At least the cost of surveillance and enforcement should come
>down however, making the consideration of effective surveillance and
>enforcement fiscally acceptable.

Imagine that the hardware cost of supporting another upload is $1/yr, but
that regulation has increased the legal wage to $100/yr.  Upload John
Smith is thinking of starting a new business whose main expense is
10,000 employees.   The costs of this business are then $1,000,000/yr
if done by the book.  John could instead create 10,000 copies of himself
to run the business, in which case his costs would be $10,000, plus
whatever it takes to hide the computers running his uploads.  This would
clearly be extremely tempting to John.

Presumably John's copies of himself are not going to complain about the
arrangement.   So to prevent this one might need to inspect every computer
capable of running an upload at anything close to the efficiency of computers
designed to run uploads, to make sure they aren't running hidden uploads.
Alternatively one might need accurate ways to estimate the number of people
that must be needed to produce any given product or service.   And one
would have to prevent the existence of "free wage zones," so global governance
would be required.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323