The Nonlinear Library EA - #191 - The economy and national security after AGI (Carl Shulman on the 80,000 Hours Podcast) by 80000 Hours
Jun 29, 2024
27:55
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: #191 - The economy and national security after AGI (Carl Shulman on the 80,000 Hours Podcast), published by 80000 Hours on June 29, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
We just published an interview: Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI. Listen on Spotify or click through for other audio options, the transcript, and related links. Below are the episode summary and some key excerpts.
Episode summary
Consider just the magnitude of the hammer that is being applied to this situation: it's going from millions of scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs to billions and trillions on the compute and AI software side. It's just a very large change.
You should also be surprised if such a large change doesn't affect other macroscopic variables in the way that, say, the introduction of hominids has radically changed the biosphere, and the Industrial Revolution greatly changed human society.
Carl Shulman
The human brain does what it does with a shockingly low energy supply: just 20 watts - a fraction of a cent worth of electricity per hour. What would happen if AI technology merely matched what evolution has already managed, and could accomplish the work of top human professionals given a 20-watt power supply?
Many people sort of consider that hypothetical, but maybe nobody has followed through and considered all the implications as much as Carl Shulman. Behind the scenes, his work has greatly influenced how leaders in artificial general intelligence (AGI) picture the world they're creating.
Carl simply follows the logic to its natural conclusion. This is a world where 1 cent of electricity can be turned into medical advice, company management, or scientific research that would today cost $100s, resulting in a scramble to manufacture chips and apply them to the most lucrative forms of intellectual labour.
It's a world where, given their incredible hourly salaries, the supply of outstanding AI researchers quickly goes from 10,000 to 10 million or more, enormously accelerating progress in the field.
It's a world where companies operated entirely by AIs working together are much faster and more cost-effective than those that lean on humans for decision making, and the latter are progressively driven out of business.
It's a world where the technical challenges around control of robots are rapidly overcome, leading to robots into strong, fast, precise, and tireless workers able to accomplish any physical work the economy requires, and a rush to build billions of them and cash in.
It's a world where, overnight, the number of human beings becomes irrelevant to rates of economic growth, which is now driven by how quickly the entire machine economy can copy all its components. Looking at how long it takes complex biological systems to replicate themselves (some of which can do so in days) that occurring every few months could be a conservative estimate.
It's a world where any country that delays participating in this economic explosion risks being outpaced and ultimately disempowered by rivals whose economies grow to be 10-fold, 100-fold, and then 1,000-fold as large as their own.
As the economy grows, each person could effectively afford the practical equivalent of a team of hundreds of machine 'people' to help them with every aspect of their lives.
And with growth rates this high, it doesn't take long to run up against Earth's physical limits - in this case, the toughest to engineer your way out of is the Earth's ability to release waste heat. If this machine economy and its insatiable demand for power generates more heat than the Earth radiates into space, then it will rapidly heat up and become uninhabitable for humans and other animals.
This eventually creates pressure to move economic activity off-planet. There's little need for computer chips to be on Ear...
We just published an interview: Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI. Listen on Spotify or click through for other audio options, the transcript, and related links. Below are the episode summary and some key excerpts.
Episode summary
Consider just the magnitude of the hammer that is being applied to this situation: it's going from millions of scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs to billions and trillions on the compute and AI software side. It's just a very large change.
You should also be surprised if such a large change doesn't affect other macroscopic variables in the way that, say, the introduction of hominids has radically changed the biosphere, and the Industrial Revolution greatly changed human society.
Carl Shulman
The human brain does what it does with a shockingly low energy supply: just 20 watts - a fraction of a cent worth of electricity per hour. What would happen if AI technology merely matched what evolution has already managed, and could accomplish the work of top human professionals given a 20-watt power supply?
Many people sort of consider that hypothetical, but maybe nobody has followed through and considered all the implications as much as Carl Shulman. Behind the scenes, his work has greatly influenced how leaders in artificial general intelligence (AGI) picture the world they're creating.
Carl simply follows the logic to its natural conclusion. This is a world where 1 cent of electricity can be turned into medical advice, company management, or scientific research that would today cost $100s, resulting in a scramble to manufacture chips and apply them to the most lucrative forms of intellectual labour.
It's a world where, given their incredible hourly salaries, the supply of outstanding AI researchers quickly goes from 10,000 to 10 million or more, enormously accelerating progress in the field.
It's a world where companies operated entirely by AIs working together are much faster and more cost-effective than those that lean on humans for decision making, and the latter are progressively driven out of business.
It's a world where the technical challenges around control of robots are rapidly overcome, leading to robots into strong, fast, precise, and tireless workers able to accomplish any physical work the economy requires, and a rush to build billions of them and cash in.
It's a world where, overnight, the number of human beings becomes irrelevant to rates of economic growth, which is now driven by how quickly the entire machine economy can copy all its components. Looking at how long it takes complex biological systems to replicate themselves (some of which can do so in days) that occurring every few months could be a conservative estimate.
It's a world where any country that delays participating in this economic explosion risks being outpaced and ultimately disempowered by rivals whose economies grow to be 10-fold, 100-fold, and then 1,000-fold as large as their own.
As the economy grows, each person could effectively afford the practical equivalent of a team of hundreds of machine 'people' to help them with every aspect of their lives.
And with growth rates this high, it doesn't take long to run up against Earth's physical limits - in this case, the toughest to engineer your way out of is the Earth's ability to release waste heat. If this machine economy and its insatiable demand for power generates more heat than the Earth radiates into space, then it will rapidly heat up and become uninhabitable for humans and other animals.
This eventually creates pressure to move economic activity off-planet. There's little need for computer chips to be on Ear...