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Notes -
To the best of my understanding, Yudkowsky's current risk model involves AI using nanotechnology to destroy the world.
Or just like, taking control of the US military, since obviously the pentagon will have a bunch of things run by AIs if it makes them more effective.
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Nah his current risk model is more like "AI discovers fundamental new principles of science, and exploits phenomena we don't know about to kill everyone", that's what the "send an air-conditioner blueprint to the past" example he keeps talking about is meant to illustrate. The nanotech/biotech distinction doesn't seem especially sharp or important to me, it's just different ways of getting at fine-grained control of very small things.
And in the typical FOOM scenario (which is admittedly probably unlikely), you might get an AI that can do like 100 years of intellectual work of an entire civilization made of Geniuses every single second, at which point it seems like it could solve nanotech trivially.
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