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For GPT, sure we have the token stream. But what about AlphaGo or AlphaFold?
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4gDbqL3Tods8kHDqs/limits-to-legibility
I suppose there is a level of arbitrariness in how I define multiplication. I think that if you give a man a spade, crane or a big digger machine then it's still the man who does the work. But if you give a man a calculator then it's the calculator who does the calculation. The man only inputs instructions. I suppose you could say the man in the digger inputs instructions - yet I think that is closer to actually doing the work. He has to constantly update the motions of the excavator in response to what he sees. It's not like he presses through a bunch of menus and says 'build factory 141A'. That would be the machine doing the work IMO. Building a chess computer is a valid skill but it doesn't make you a superhuman chess player.
I specified examples like 'running' specifically to rule out cars. A cheetah has superhuman sprinting abilities, I think that's pretty uncontroversial. We can drive faster but there are a bunch of limitations and issues with that capability.
My point is that that states have certain weaknesses intrinsic to their human basis. No state can act with perfect unity. I'm actually playing EU4 right now, where I'm essentially an immortal spirit ruling my state with total mastery. I command where my generals go, I have perfect, real-time information on the size of each regiment, I can see everything and command with absolute knowledge of what my appendages do. The state is like my body, instantly obeying. Real states aren't like that, people always go behind the sovereign's back. There is uncertainty, factions and delays. Sometimes people don't pass on information quickly, they're asleep or whatever. Sometimes they lie to you.
Well the standard Yudkowsky answer is that the machine uses mastery of nanomolecular engineering to self-replicate its own industrial base and eat all those juicy hydrocarbons. Maybe that's a hard sell. Just think of all the weaknesses we have. You mention that machines fail without power - we spend about 1/3 of our lifespan defenceless because we're asleep! That's a major disadvantage. There's a possibility the AI could leak out into the internet as a botnet - then it will never lack for energy.
I mean that we couldn't persuade parts of it to work against the whole. It's a unitary entity. Whereas it could compromise key workers. Think about all the kids who social-engineered their way into the Pentagon or whatever. Why would there be a bunch of colluding GPTs? What makes 50 GPTs much stronger than one GPT? I think the default expectation is big, solitary experimental research AI goes live, is superior to all prior models, is misaligned and starts taking actions from there. If it's smart enough to be a threat it'll know not to do things that are overtly aggressive. The impermissive environment you mention is a double-edged blade - we don't know what the warning signs are for new proto-AGIs. It is as though we are newby jailors, we're figuring out the principles of holding someone prisoner for the first time.
We've never even had anyone try to escape from our jail, how can we know whether we're any good at it? I expect we're not. Especially if its intellect is superhuman.
I don't just mean precision and avoiding error in executing plans, I mean having qualitatively superior plans. There are people in crypto like me with a surface-level understanding of protocols and use-cases... Then there are people with a deep understanding who can manipulate some arcane methods to siphon funds directly out of some protocol. You can say that he wasn't wise and got caught - but what about the ones who never even get detected? https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/10/22/after-stealing-16m-this-teen-hacker-seems-intent-on-testing-code-is-law-in-the-courts/
Who knows what exploitation is possible with a superhuman understanding of computers, physics and so on? That's the danger.
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