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The primary difference between us and apes is that our brains are a little bit bigger and there's probably some extra dedicated hardware for language. A little bit of extra intelligence goes a long way - we rule the world and apes live or die at our pleasure.
Computers can be immensely large and powerful, a million times the mass and power consumption of our 20-watt brains. Logically, advanced computers should end up being immensely smarter than we are, the gap would be much further than that between apes and men. While there may be some upper limit to how intelligent one can be, it is very unlikely that our brains are near it. They have to be small enough to fit through a pregnant mother's legs after all.
We have never created any intelligent being other than humans before. There are surely various unknown challenges with doing something like this for the first time. The psychology of a computer would be extremely alien, it is unfamiliar to our mode of thinking. It's interests may not be aligned with ours and its power would be very great.
This is a major threat, more important than climate change or systemic _____ism. Climate change cannot plot against us and all problems with human minds can be solved with other human minds.
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I wouldn't call a brain three times as large 'a little bit bigger.'
length vs volume. something can have way more volume despite not appearing much bigger, i am guesing that is what he means
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Depends on which other apes you compare against. The difference between homo erectus (discoverer of "bang the right two rocks together the right way and you can make one a little sharper") and homo sapiens (discoverer of "bang the right two rocks together the right way and you can instantly incinerate an entire city under a radioactive mushroom cloud") is more like 1.5x. With Koomey's Law slowing down that's about a year and a half of advancement.
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