[ExI] Limiting factors of intelligence explosion speeds

[Ben Zaiboc]

Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com> asked:

>> Lastly, there is the fact that an AGI could communicate with its sisters on
>> high-bandwidth channels, as I mentioned in my essay.  We cannot do that.  It
>> would make a difference.

> Really can't a fyborg do that? Aren't we already doing that? :-/


Absolutely not!

When was the last time a class full of students downloaded, in a few seconds, all the knowledge and skills they need to read and interpret an NMR scan, or a bunch of crystallography data?

When was the last time you gave someone the experience of your last holiday? (not a third-hand account, but the actual experience)

If you ever needed to fly a helicopter in an emergency, would you be able to download the skill in a few seconds?

We are not already doing that.  Nor can we (afaik), as long as our brains remain biological, and certainly not without some radical tinkering.

AIs would be able to do those things easily, and that's just scratching the surface in a rather unimaginative, human-centric, way.

Yes, you can instruct a computer to do download data about all those things, but how will that help you? Suppose your computer has limbs able to fly the helicopter, or operate the lab equipment. You'd then have to program it to use that data to perform the tasks you want, and you'd still not understand what you were doing.  And that holiday would remain strictly third-hand.

I don't want to go so far as to say that the fyborg idea is no use at all, but then neither are bows and arrows, or candles.

Ben Zaiboc