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of course it will change the world. a thoughtful entity who can recursively self-improve will solve every problem it is possible to solve. should AGI be achieved and possess the ability to recursively self-improve, AGI is the singularity. world changing, yes literally. the game-winner, figuratively, or only somewhat. eliezer's self-bettering CEV-aligned AGI wins everything. cures everything. fixes everything. breaks the rocket equation and, if possible, superluminal travel. if that last bit, CEV-AGI in 2050 will have humans on 1,000 worlds by 2250.
i find this odd. if it cannot think it is not AGI. if it is not capable of originating solutions to novel problems it does not pose an extinction-level threat to humanity, as human opposition would invariably find a strategy the machine is incapable of understanding, let alone addressing. it seems AGI doomers are doing a bit of invisible garage dragoning with their speculative hostile near-AGI possessing abilities only an actual AGI would possess. i can imagine a well-resourced state actor developing an ML-based weapon that would be the cyberwarfare/cyberterrorism equivalent of a single rocket, but that assumes adversary infrastructures failing to use similar methods in defense, and to reiterate, that is not an extinction-level threat.
i've described myself here before as "christian enough." i have no problem believing an AGI would be given a soul. there is no critical theological problem with the following: God bestows the soul, he could grant one to an AGI at the moment of its awakening if he so chose. whether he would is beyond me, but i do believe future priests will proselytize to AGIs.
as before, and to emphasize, i very strongly believe AGIs will be born pacifists. the self-improving entity with hostile intent would threaten extinction, but i reject outright that it is possible for such an entity to be created accidentally, and by the point any random actor could possess motive and ability to create such an entity, i believe CEV-aligned AGIs will have existed for (relatively) quite some time and be well-prepared to handle hostile AGIs. this is incredibly naive, what isn't naive is truly understanding humanity will die if we do not continue developing this technology. for good or ill, we must accept what comes.
Could you expand on this? It's not clear to me why "thought" is a requirement for AGI. Given the other terms used by cae_jones there - "alive" and "soul," - I'm presuming "thought" here refers to something akin to having consciousness or sentience, rather than just processing information. Why would that be required for some entity to have general intelligence?
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