[ExI] what if... the singularity isn't near?

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 05/11/2025 03:39, spike wrote:

 > it appears to me that what we are calling AI might be a kind of false 
alarm


I for one think it is, at least in the sense that what we call AI now is 
not going to develop into general intelligence, much less 
superintelligence. It's far too narrow in the kind of information 
processing it does, compared to the only generally-intelligent thing we 
know, our own brains.

There are some people working on different models of AI though, and I 
reckon that the current models will start to show their limits before 
long, and will need to be changed. At some point soon, I suspect much 
more capable and 'general' AIs will start to emerge.

I doubt that estimates of an imminent singularity are too far off, even 
though they might be based on the wrong signs.


 > What if. intelligence really is substrate dependent for reasons we 
don't currently understand


If intelligence is substrate-specific, and biology is the only thing 
that can sustain it, then we're really in trouble, and I think all bets 
are off.
In fact, if that is true, then all of science is in trouble. We might as 
well start taking religion and other kinds of magical thinking seriously.

However, I think we've already proved that it's not, so I'm not worried 
about it.


 > or the Singularity depends on technology we don't yet have


Doubtful, but possible, I suppose. In which case, we should all be 
checking our cryonics contracts and/or preparing to survive a very 
disruptive time in which AI-enabled humans are the disruptive force 
(instead of a totally disruptive one due to Generally-Intelligent machines).



Adrian Tymes:
 > Consider: what if it is still a few decades off, so what we do today 
still matters. What can we do today to make it more likely that it will 
eventually come about, and that it will do so in a way that we benefit from?


I think that in that case, research (and implementation) in the 
direction of life-extension and augmentation of biological critters like 
us will be even more important than it is now, so I'd want to put more 
effort into that. In the absence of imminent singularity, biology 
becomes the more important thing. Current AI models can help enormously 
with that.

We also would need to take threats from hostile foreign actors much more 
seriously. At the moment, I'm appalled at the general attitude towards 
threats like communist china, russia and north korea (islam, while 
troubling, probably isn't anywhere near as big a threat). I think we 
have fallen foul of the fact that tolerance, while in general a good 
idea, cannot include tolerance of intolerance. We have been tolerating 
intolerance for too long now, and it's increasingly biting our 
collective arses.
Burying our heads in the sand seems to be the most popular action. 
Meanwhile these regimes are getting stronger (I'm not sure about russia, 
but it seems to be more resilient than I would have expected at the 
beginning of the ukrainian war. Extreme bluffing does seem to be a 
russian characteristic, though, so who can tell...). Communist china in 
particular is ramping up their capabilities in just about everything, 
and extending their tentacles around the entire world, and they are 
completely antithetical to our 'western' values (and very good at hiding 
or obfuscating that fact). We can expect the whole world to eventually 
become another Hong Kong, Tibet or Eastern Turkistan ('Xinjiang'), 
without a big change in attitude in the western governments. Or a 
singularity.

-- 
Ben