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And what happens if my (as in nobody) AI first develops autonomous self replicating killer robots? We are not that far technologically.
A: It won't happen.
B: If it does, it they get iced by dudes with rifles because AI can't violate thermodynamics and energy density is energy density.
The battlefields of Ukraine have shown pretty conclusively that even extremely primitive killer robots >>> dudes with rifles.
Humans need to sleep, it's very hard to see or detect these tiny things, let alone shoot them down (with a rifle!) and these cheap drones are very easily replaceable.
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You know what dudes with rifles do when they're confronted by a swarm of tiny hunter-killer drones that move faster than the eye can track, let alone a rifle can hit?
Die.
Just peruse /r/CombatFootage till the truth of that statement becomes obvious. And these are human operated, just wait till they're hooked up with half decent facial recognition, swarm protocols and uniform/behavioral tracking.
If they manage to neutralize said swarm, the rifles will be doing approximately zero of the heavy lifting.
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A: It will happen. Too many regimes want to control their population fully. For them the machines to keep the people subdued would get rid of their main worry - the loyalty of their regime insiders. So there will always be money invested in this tech. Also there are few parts of the supply and military chain that really require humans (mostly science and imagination) if the ai is potent enough and self replicating industrial modules are close enough if you have the eventual ChatGPT 42 helping you.
B: If you produce autonomous weapons system faster than the other side bullets in the end you win.
As 2rafa rightfully pointed - the hard part is not the tech, but hiding it until the exponential function is unstoppable. You only have two places really - bottom of the ocean, or subterranean in the Antarctic. There is enough geothermal to go around.
Also can you elaborate on the thermodynamics thing - I can't understand what you mean.
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Yeah if you secretly develop a fleet of autonomous killer robots under the nose of the Pentagon, DARPA, the FBI and CIA and every other authority and they’re so good that they can destroy (enough of) the entire command structure of the world’s most powerful nations such that they unconditionally surrender to you, then you’ll be in power.
I consider that quite unlikely.
Fauci managed to do his gain of function research under the nose of both the US government and the Chinese government and they didn't stop him. The US government wanted to stop him, gain of function research was forbidden in the USA, which is why he had to send money to China to do it there. I'm pretty sure that the Chinese government would have stopped him if they had been keeping up with the technology and realized the stakes.
He managed it by being high-ranking insider. Applying that insight to "secretly develop a fleet of autonomous killer robots", if you are an insider working for DARPA, the Pentagon will help you keep it secret. The top people are politicians in the Joe Biden electoral sense. The level below that are politicians in the bureaucratic maneuvering sense. If you are the highest ranking technologist, who understands the details of the authorization mechanisms that confer control of the killer swarm, you are exposed to serious temptation.
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