Look, long before we can slice up a human brain and emulate it so that it runs thousands of times faster, we’ll have an system that works like a human brain, only a lot slower. Then once we’ve got that we can throw enough resources at the problem to get a system that works at the speed of a human brain, and then even more resources to get one even faster.
However, it is not clear to me that working faster is a suitable criteria for superintelligence. Most people don’t do anything worthwhile in their 75 years of life, having them run their brains 1000 times faster doesn’t help one bit. Faster thinking doesn’t mean better thinking, it just means faster thinking. Your emulated brain is going to get bored grinding out a proof for Fermat’s Last Theorem for 500 years, they’ll quit on you. Running a human brain faster doesn’t mean running a human brain better.
And if we really do invent some sort of system that really does think better than a human brain, even a really smart human, and then put that system to work on conquering the world, I doubt it’s going to look much like a game of Command and Conquer. Like, shouldn’t that super-brain think of a better way? In other words, if you’ve thought of it, it doesn’t count as super-intelligent, by definition.
To go back to the OP, has any inventor, in all of history, ever invented a new technology that enabled the inventor to conquer anything? Yes, nations with superior technology have conquered other nations using that superior technology. But nobody ever invented gunpowder and used that invention to make themselves king.
Lemur, I can think of the basics of how to win “command and conquer” style. But I lack the resources as a single mortal with a 75 year operating lifespan to implement any of these hows. I can’t learn advanced aerospace engineering overnight and draft up a plan for an advanced aerospace fighter - my “hypersonic scramjet” as mentioned above.
We know they are possible - prototypes will fly - and people have drawings of a full scale model. But the mental effort to actually design a set of schematics that pass simulation testing, then the effort to machine the prototypes, then test the prototypes, then evaluate the data correctly to find the mistakes and repeat the loop…it is an effort that would take thousands of people about 20 years.
If you weren’t alone - if you were in a virtual skunkworks with half a dozen peers all thinking at the same speed as you - and you could make small tweaks to yourself (or others could make them) to reduce your perception of boredom - you could do it.
Yes, you’d be rate-limited by the real world. Simulations would only go so far into the task of say, making that aerospace fighter, or designing the railgun toting super-tank. But you’d be running robots in parallel at hundreds or thousands of places, all of them smoothly working on different portions of the prototyping process. You wouldn’t have to wait on accountants or executive meetings, you’d have the executive and engineering staff and every other role served by about a dozen people.
Similarly, a machine that fits in a few shipping containers and it has millions of mechanical parts and can copy itself if given raw materials is physically possible. But it might take conventional engineers 50 years to design something like that, if not more. The complexity would be absurd. (that’s the self replicating factory you would use to make the war machines needed to take over the planet)
Finally, if the beings committing this attack are digital, they need not fear death or being sniped in reprisal. So long as they win the war - enough copies of their equipment is left standing when the major world powers all fall - they can just restore from rendant copies the precise digital states of their minds and basically not die. If you risk going to war in real life as a mortal human, there is a high chance you may be killed and your existence ends. With state streaming between redundant digital systems, it would continue.
I think a being that “thinks like I do and has the same ideas I do but has the cognitive energy of a billion geniuses” is a super-intelligence. Feel free to disagree, but explain your reasoning.
I’m thinking technology that is a force multiplier on a scale never seen, and able to be used anonymously. Anonymous use is important to some extent; the advantage being that there is no way to fight an enemy you cannot identify.
For example, some guy has this weapon, he sends some message via email saying “I am your new overlord, you must all wear red socks tomorrow blah blah blah . . .” Next day, everyone not wearing red socks turns up dead - and nobody is sure why. Have they all been bit by poisonous nanobot mosquitos that are only deterred by red socks? Is there something put in the water whose only antidote is red sock dye?
After that people would likely start obeying those overlord messages.
At that, could you secretly use sufficiently advanced surveillance equipment to spy on blackmailable VIPs? So, y’know, less telling 'em to wear some red undergarment or else – and more telling 'em that they’re wearing some red undergarment, we have people everywhere, we know all your secrets, so do as I say or else?
I created thisthread a while back about an antichrist and felt like the only way an antichrist could conquer the world was to be innovative and brilliant enough to invent new military technologies and create societies that ran well. I stand by that.
Isn’t an “antichrist” a being with magical powers? Can’t he water into wine some diesel fuel for his tanks? “Bread and fishes” himself some more tanks or antiaircraft missiles? Maybe allow his tanks to drive on water so he doesn’t have to use landing boats? Revive all his dead soldiers after they fall? Bribe government leaders by magically healing their illnesses and those of loved ones?
Frankly, if a being had magical powers similar to popular interpretations of the Bible, taking over the world would be easy, assuming those powers did not have some sort of hidden cap on their usage that wasn’t mentioned in the bible. (in the bible, Jesus supposedly heals people a few at a time, but it does not state whether or not he could heal a whole stadium-worth at once. Does using his powers count against his “spells per day”? Can he resurrect from the dead thousands of people at once, or does each rez take him all night like it did in the Bible? Per the bible, he can self resurrect, and free his resurrected body from obstacles, so presumably if he were sniped and then dropped in a titanium casket into the depths of the ocean, he’d be able to burst out of the casket and swim to the surface to resume his campaign)
Oh, that bit where he had a disciple move his net to the other side of the boat to find a bunch of fish - couldn’t he do something similar like “check the balance on your *other *debit card” to magic up billions of dollars?
The deep problem with [invent new tech then conquer the world] is that humans and human organizations are even better at copying tech than they are at inventing it.
So the invention needs to be almost magically advanced compared to current tech, or else the inventor needs to get a huge clandestine head start on production and deployment before the secret breaks.
Despite the slowness of normal DoD R&D plus procurement, there are several government offices and private suppliers which practice a much more agile brand of R&D and procurement. Things slow down again once DoD needs 10 thousand or 10 million of whatever the gizmo is, but for short production runs the agile folks are pretty damn fast. Other countries have similar agencies & processes of varying skill & speed.
All of which is to say the secret inventor better get a pretty damn good head start. Or else, like Japan and Germany in the 20th Century, they’ll be decisively steamrollered once the planet-wide military-industrial complex is brought to bear.
Sure. That’s why the only technology that could possibly work has to :
Be an extremely efficient weapon without any logistical limits on deploying it, so it can be used to snipe rival research efforts to develop equivalent tech.
Anonymous stealth robot swarms, bioweapons that can kill a whole city at once, etc are that kind of weapon - the conventional military-industrial complex would not effectively be able to intercept it before it hits a strategic target.
Give exponential gains. In my hypothetical scenario above, the gains are exponential. If you had self replicating factories that can double themselves every week, and you were 1 month ahead, you’d be 16 times ahead. If you were 2 months ahead, 256. 3 months ahead, 4000 times.
Large organizations can blow 3 months just waiting on funding.
Except if superintelligent digital intelligences don’t fear death, why exactly are they conquering the planet?
What’s the point?
Human beings have instinctive behaviors given to us by our evolutionary history, and one of those behaviors is not wanting to die. Why would a computer intelligence have the same instinct?
Uh what? There’s nothing magic about exponential growth. The eyes you are using to roll at me were grown exponentially - how do you think you went from a single celled organism to a massive, multi-kilogram system in just a few months?
As for resources, such as mass and energy, you’re literally sitting on such a large pile of them that the gravity holds you quite firmly to your chair…
