Shane,
In your first posting on the "open AGI" subject you mentioned that you
were concerned about the risk on the one hand of:
* inordinate power being concentrated in the hands of the controllers
of the first advanced AGI
* power to do serious harm being made widely available if AGI
technology is available to all.
My guess is that if there is very restricted access to a *very* powerful
technology - especially one that could be used to make lots of money
or be used to make a person or an organisation or nation very powerful
in other ways that these sorts of forces will beat a path to the source of
that power and they will make sure they have it (by whatever means
works). All it will take I suspect is a serious demonstration of the 'proof
of concept' and this process will be set decisively in motion.
Making the whole technology available to everyone would be one way
to avoid the concentration of power, but it would put the technology in
the hands of every loner malcontent and criminal across the globe. So
on the face of it that doesn't seem to be such a good way to go.
But perhaps if everyone had access to advanced AGI computational
power in the way that most of us have access to desktop computers
now - would that give the rest of society the computational power to
keep the loner malcontents and crime syndicates in check??
Maybe the way to go is to make sure that AGI computational power is
rapidly disseminated to a *medium-sized* initial circle of users -
corporations, governments and civil society groups - so that none of the
legitimate forces in society get a power advantage over the others and
so the legitimate forces in society are widely empowered and can keep
on top of the effects of the inadvertent (but inevitable) diffusion of AGI
power to malcontents and criminals.
If super advanced AGI power emerges under the control of one or a
few powerful governments then I think power mongers will simply work
to make sure they can control the government and hence the AGI
power (as they have worked to control the military industrial complexes
of the most powerful nations).
If AGI power emerges as a purely commercial proposition then I think
civil society will be priced out of the market and the power balance in
society will be seriously disturbed in the direction of further
concentration of power favouring either corporations and or
governments.
Cheers, Philip
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