Why develop your own AGI when you can wait and eventually take it for free?
Have a look at what China is investing in heavily: communications technologies and the space race, currency, natural resources, independent Internet/Web technologies, 5th-gen weaponry, AI-enabled transport, supermassive production (build, food, water, and now moving to regen power), and so on. What does that tell us? Either nothing, or that China is preparing a specific environment for it to be able to push suddenly and effectively into competitive territories. China only play to win, not to share. I think that's what they have in common with the USA and Russia. Ben, for AGI, it must be that your direct, or indirect contribution to their future capabilities speak for itself? China's scaled activities resemble strategies of empire building, not dissimilar to the Han and Ming dynasties. In further support, more competitive indicators for my argument: China produces 1 million engineers per annum (they dominate the high-end labor force). China have 2 million free, skilled to highly-skilled laborers in prison (lowest-cost labor), China's GDP is growing while the rest of the world are mostly stagnating (more liquidity). China have acquired masses of land in many continents and are actively colonizing those areas with loyalists and officials (space of influence where to establish colonies). Chinese children make up an estimated 90%+ of all online English tutoring (preparing to be in the West). China won the national health service contract for the AU, the whole African continent - together with France (securing medical influence of the largest continent - the breadbasket of the world). Furthermore, China have numerous young-adult citizens working as professional and students on key projects in the West, and co publishing. China have many, exact replicas of Western towns/city areas, assimilating choice citizens. China's on a mission to be the first in the world, to build the biggest, to be the smartest. I think they are succeeding. What does that tell you then? Is China going to compete, or are they already in advanced phases of globalization? Are these symbols of a nation unsure of its capabilities, bedding itself down to wait things out, or of a nation on the march? Ask Taiwan, Australia, Japan, America and Europe then, consider the South and East China Sea confrontations, growing incidents of war, and these might agree with China's most-aggressive advancing tactics. China now, seems ready to advance, while the West are reeling. To imagine and suggest that China are not going to effectively compete in the AGI space is implausible. They are already, and I think they are just doing it very smartly, most unobtrusively, and in a highly-militarized fashion. China are collaborating with many 3rd-party countries on emerging technologies, smart countries, by all accounts. They have obtained deals for new-gen nuclear plants in many countries, Namibia being the latest. Over the past, 5 years, there's been a trove of white papers and hi-tech patents blossoming from China. I was looking for some of these products, but they are not on the market yet. I predict we would soon see a massive unveiling of Chinese-owned general AI technologies, as well as hordes of narrow AI applications. One thing is for sure; where the West misses a step, China almost certainly steps in. Are Chinese persons more intelligent than their competitors, than non-Chinese? It's still too early to tell. Can the CCP be studied as a model for AGI? Given the hi-tech impetus obtained from the covid-pandemic, to my mind they are appearing to be rapidly moving towards becoming the first nation with a citified singularity. Certainly, we have much to learn from the Chinese. ________________________________ From: Ben Goertzel <b...@goertzel.org> Sent: Thursday, 31 December 2020 11:19 To: AGI <agi@agi.topicbox.com> Subject: Re: [agi] CCP as a model for AGI I don't think it's very useful to model complex systems like major nations as one-dimensional utility-maximizers. Asking "whose utility function" about a complex system of that nature -- which has a large number of shiftingly-weighted, imprecisely-and-shiftingly-defined "objectives" and also largely self-organizes in a non-goal-directed way -- is probably the wrong framing.... But asking who will exert a more major influence (e.g. the West versus China, or corporate shareholders vs. the scientific community) certainly has meaning.... And I don't currently see evidence that China will exert more influence on AGI than the West. Things could evolve that way. But I note there is not yet a China analogue of Deep Mind or OpenAI, let alone say OpenCog or SingularityNET or whatever. OpenNARS is founded by Pei Wang, who is mainland Chinese originally, but is centered in the West, etc. I truly don't understand why folks believe the Chinese gov't is going to be able to assimilate the US to its goals and thus achieve a dominant role in shaping AGI .... China does have a larger population than the US and has an extraordinary capability for mass-manufacture of electronics, and plenty of other interesting advantages, but the AGI advantage seems clearly to US/UK ... I'd like to understand if there are better arguments though... ben ben On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 8:58 AM James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com<mailto:jabow...@gmail.com>> wrote: On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 12:17 PM Ben Goertzel <b...@goertzel.org<mailto:b...@goertzel.org>> wrote: Regarding the CCP as a general intelligence(*), I would say all societies and large corporations can be viewed that way, but I don't see evidence that the corporate-government complex of China is more generally intelligent than the corporate-government complexes of US or Western Europe. What is the evidence or argument in that regard?... If the CCP is more capable of assimilating ("Turking") the US to the CCP's utility function than vis versa then any claims as to the US being "more generally intelligent" become superfluous. That's what I meant when I said: > The CCP-as-AGI is more capable of "Turking" the US-as-AGI than is the > US-as-AGI of "Turking" the CCP-as-AGI. (*) to me calling a country or corporation an "AGI" feels needlessly confusing, since these are systems largely composed of humans, and not engineered from human parts but evolved from human social interactions. But whatever, I understand what is meant. The Future of Humanity Institute<https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/> is an exemplar for why the question of "Whose utility function?" cannot be swept under the rug with regards to "systems largely composed of humans...evolved from human social interactions". Indeed "artificial" means humans had agency in the creation of the artifact. The concern of "Friendly Artificial General Intelligence" hence "The Future of Humanity" is all about the proper application of that agency in selecting the utility function of aid artifact. What future is there for "humanity" under the wrong utility function of _any_ notion of AGI? On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 6:54 AM James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com<mailto:jabow...@gmail.com>> wrote: As with "AI debates" in general, people can easily talk past each other by failing to acknowledge they are addressing different questions. Ben Goertzel is addressing China's in/ability to create an "AGI" in the sense of Legg, Hutter, et al. Steve Richfield is positing the CCP _is_ an "AGI" in a more vague sense that might, if "black boxed" also fit with "AGI" in the sense of Legg, Hutter, et al. Now, it may certainly be argued that _if_ Steve is right, _then_ it is capable of _creating_ an AGI: "The Singularity" occurs when some AI achieves the ability to create a more intelligent AI, and this threshold of "AI" is the most general notion of AGI. My approach, respecting Steve's original question, is from a position that what we call "The Global Economy" _is_ an AGI that is already operating with an "unfriendly" utility function, seeing individual human beings as raw materials in its environment to refine into "Mechanical Turks". The only extent to which human quality of life, or even the quality of the biosphere, is relevant to this AGI is the extent to which it can provide resources to replicate its incorporations (corporations/NGOs, governments, etc.) wielding hive-like power over, and ultimately disintermediating life in seeking access to energy and matter. The CCP is merely among the more conspicuous cases of evolution toward such an incipient AGI hive incorporation. Now, having clarified the question I am addressing (Steve's in the OP): Hive specialization in eusocial species recapitulates, in a less effective way, the clone-army specialization seen in sexual organism stem-cell differentiation (modulating SC clone gene expression) into various organs of the organism. The brain is an organ. The CCP constructs its "brain" not so much by altering gene expression of clones but by utilizing its long history of civil service examination to mine the population for "neurons". THAT is where the math comes in to compare the CCP to the US government's intelligence agencies. Having said that, Ben is correct that the CCP's structure is more amenable to this mining operation, and one should see the "private sector" coddled by the CCP as an updated form of its civil service examination tradition. While it may be true that the resulting "brain" is not going to be as capable of producing a silicon AGI as the US, this misses Steve's, or at least my point: The CCP-as-AGI is more capable of "Turking" the US-as-AGI than is the US-as-AGI of "Turking" the CCP-as-AGI. Why do I say this? See my prior post describing all the ways the US has inhibited its own intelligence agencies from mining the population for intelligence that those intelligence agencies can "Turk". Indeed, it is my working hypothesis that this inhibition was the result of the CCP engaging in the _real_ "Unrestricted Warfare" that the document by that name represents as something far more benign. On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 5:03 AM Ben Goertzel <b...@goertzel.org<mailto:b...@goertzel.org>> wrote: I don't think China's slightly higher average IQ is a big advantage for them... However, their governmental organization obviously has some practical advantages. As one example, they can get their intel/ military work done directly within their big internet tech companies, rather than via sluggish military contractors and limited-scope awkward back-channel-ish alliances with big internet tech companies like happens in the US. This means they are getting on average cleverer and harder working folks working on their gov't oriented tech, not due to IQ issues but due to organizational issues... On the other hand they continue to have deep problems with radical technical innovation due to a persistent culture of mistrust, and this will cause them real issues, because there are significant differences btw US and China contexts and copying/adapting Western innovations will probably not allow them to overtake the West technologically... I predict AGI will emerge first via organizations that are centered in the West, and China will then attempt to copy it, but will not be fast enough ... because the org that first creates AGI will be very fast-moving and agile and not that easy for creativity-phobic Chinese institutions to catch up with Note I lived in HK for 9 yrs and made many dozens of trips to Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen etc. etc. ... I have met w/ folks at the highest levels in Chinese tech companies and SOEs and fairly high up in gov't. There is a lot to admire and a lot to fear there, but I don't think China is really in the race as regards AGI and nor do they have the capacity to extremely rapidly play catch-up Of course all this could change in 10 yrs, so these comments are most relevant if AGI is achieved in the next say 7 yrs... ben On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 4:22 PM James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com<mailto:jabow...@gmail.com>> wrote: It's "Unrestricted Warfare<https://archive.org/stream/Unrestricted_Warfare_Qiao_Liang_and_Wang_Xiangsui/Unrestricted_Warfare_Qiao_Liang_and_Wang_Xiangsui_djvu.txt>" and as I've pointed out on numerous occasions, that document strikes me as a limited hangout disinformation. Keep in mind the Chinese have a higher average IQ than Europeans, their population is several times larger and they have a _very_ long history of civil service examinations. Extrapolate that mean advantage out to the high IQ tail where the ratios explode and it's hard to imagine how great an advantage they have when it comes to "peacetime" strategy. Add to that the belly-full of the West with Sassoon's steamships delivering opium and Mao calling it "a century of humiliation"... On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 6:48 PM Steve Richfield <steve.richfi...@gmail.com<mailto:steve.richfi...@gmail.com>> wrote: As you are reading this, doing the best you can to survive the Pandemic, consider... The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a pretty good model for AGI, as there are ~500 people working together to provide the best possible management for China as it attempts to interact as well as possible with the rest of the world. A rising tide usually floats all boats, but China perceived an advantage to restrict information about COVID-19 to inflict it on the rest of the world, which is consistent with their internal manual Unconventional Warfare, which details LOTS of dirty tricks you might expect an AGI to employ as it seeks its goals. This manual is a REALLY scary read. Why would anyone expect an AGI to be any "friendlier" than the CCP? Why wouldn't anyone expect an AGI to be even nastier? This dirty deed WILL work for the CCP - unless worldwide revulsion costs the CCP even more. I doubt whether an AGI would greatly consider feelings that run counter to profit. We may all be paying dearly for not reigning in the CCP long ago - and we might end up paying more if we turn an AGI loose on the world - for exactly the SAME reasons. Thoughts? Steve Richfield [https://ipmcdn.avast.com/images/icons/icon-envelope-tick-green-avg-v1.png]<http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail> Virus-free. www.avg.com<http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail> -- Ben Goertzel, PhD http://goertzel.org “Words exist because of meaning; once you've got the meaning you can forget the words. How can we build an AGI who will forget words so I can have a word with him?” -- Zhuangzhi++ -- Ben Goertzel, PhD http://goertzel.org “Words exist because of meaning; once you've got the meaning you can forget the words. How can we build an AGI who will forget words so I can have a word with him?” -- Zhuangzhi++ -- Ben Goertzel, PhD http://goertzel.org “Words exist because of meaning; once you've got the meaning you can forget the words. How can we build an AGI who will forget words so I can have a word with him?” -- Zhuangzhi++ Artificial General Intelligence List<https://agi.topicbox.com/latest> / AGI / see discussions<https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi> + participants<https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/members> + delivery options<https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription> Permalink<https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/Tf065676fd779dd5c-Mc1d7f9fbdb02cf336eb6a0b9> ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/Tf065676fd779dd5c-M570b155990f12252f86c63db Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
