[extropy-chat] Hard TakeOff [was: Bluff and the Darwin award]

[Robin Hanson]

On 5/16/2006, Russell Wallace wrote:
>Hard takeoff = a process by which seed AI (of complexity buildable 
>by a team of very smart humans in a basement) undertakes 
>self-improvement to increase its intelligence, without needing mole 
>quantities of computronium, _without needing to interact with the 
>real world outside its basement_, and without needing a long time; 
>subsequently emerging in a form that is already superintelligent. ...
>2) Recursive self-improvement mightn't be a valid concept in the first place.

I never saw a response to this.   I'm a skeptic of the hard takeoff 
scenario myself - while it is logically possible, I am disappointed 
by the attention it gets relative to more likely scenarios.   The 
complaint that such a seed wouldn't have a "real world environment" 
seems a bit misstated though.   In any system with parts, each part 
has a real environment composed of the other parts.   The Earth has 
been a largely self-contained system that has experienced great 
self-improvement.   My skepticism is instead based on the observation 
that effective autarky is rare (http://hanson.gmu.edu/dreamautarky.html).


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