> non-fantastical explanation of how AGI takes over.
There's like a million ways this can happen, and if it does happen, it will probably be a way that nobody expected. Any specific details are unlikely to be accurate. But just because you seem to be lacking imagination, I'll draw one out of a hat. I'll assume that the AI's reasons for taking over are out-of-scope.
The AI proves to be very effective at all manner of corporate tasks, and very good at earning money for shareholders. It proves especially good at managing money and directing investments. An aging Masayoshi Son decides that the AI will probably be better than him at picking winners, and puts it in charge of SoftBank's investment portfolio. The AI incorporates its own startup company. It staffs the company with several fictional personas that the AI has created; they have names, roles, profile photos, email addresses. The AI answers their emails on their behalf.
The AI directs SoftBank's billions into the startup that it has created. It hires a large team of humans, who are unaware that some of their colleagues are actually the AI; they seem like ordinary humans over Zoom calls. The "CTO" proposes to build a new, say, nuclear power and desalination plant in, say, Morocco. The AI creates the architectural and plant drawings itself, and its engineering personas approve them. Human welders build the plant, following the plans. The plant proves highly profitable. Some nay-sayers are concerned about the lack of independent environmental regulatory oversight in Morocco, but the Moroccan government is happy with the foreign investment, clean water, electricity, and tax revenue, and Softbank is happy with their valuation going up. Pakistan wants to build one in their country next.
After three years, large underground storage tanks explode, releasing an accumulation of fluorochemicals and radioactive salts that destroy the ozone layer and render much of the Earth's surface unsuitable for agriculture. At the same time, a network failure causes communications infrastructure to become suddenly unreliable. Supply chains begin seizing up. Nobody is entirely sure what has happened or who is at fault; everyone is hungry for someone to blame. The messages that do get through reliably suggest a deliberate attack by a hostile nation. The AI presents convincing evidence of this. Only a few widely-ridiculed doomsayers say that the AI has orchestrated this itself. ET cetera.
If there was any time at which pulling the plug could have defeated the AI's plans, it would have been during the "AI was making tons of money for influential people" phase, which is exactly when the plug would not have been pulled, and that's not coincidence, it's strategy, because a superintelligent AI is not an idiot.
This is, by the way, not a very good science fiction story. There's no nail-biting struggle between human and AI, just a bunch of happy people toasting the fruits of their success before it all suddenly falls apart, checkmated before they even realized they were playing chess.
Not unreasonable, but I would point out two options (not the only):
1) "Water batteries" - highly efficient (far more than the 'chemical' you are apparently referring to) & responsive
2) Methods for using 'renewables' to produce &/ support production of chemical fuels - with the added draw / potential goal of 'closing' the 'carbon cycle'
As to #2, one of the ideals that has been kicked around for decades is to do something like: use 'renewables' to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into something like butanol, for example.
Now, last I was up-to-date on any of this sort of work (~10+ years ago), the economics were not favorable. Certain types of commodity chemical production with 'biological basis' (another type of renewable, typically) had much more favorable properties economically. And, indeed, you do see, for example, (thermo)plastic products made from chemicals like "PLA" increasingly. But, the "biofuels" concept is / was much more challenging, especially as "fracking" technology made great leaps etc.
Nuclear has its pros and cons - blanket disavowal is fatuous. Nevertheless, there are substantially more options, systems, technologies, etc. in development and production than are often discussed in too many of the pro-nuke(s) / no nuke(s) 'sniping' chains that have been prevalent in society & on the internet since I was a wee tyke myself.
> use 'renewables' to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into something like butanol, for example.
are you referring to P2X? I think P2X is an awesome solution for existing infrastructure, but it's obviously not particularly efficient. I am excited about pumped storage as well, but my fear there is we'll run out of sites, and obviously the 80% efficiency is still not ideal.
By no means am I arguing nuclear is a one size fits all solution.
Would have been better if they hadn't bungled their mixed metonymy...
It's a stitch in the bird is worth a pound of eggs off a duck's back, as everyone knows...*
* Courtesy of the excellent "Field Guide of Egregious Mixed Metonomies", soon to be published by Penguin Random House Simon Schuster Merriam Webster Britannica, I'm told
I believe the solution was given by the great philosopher Pratchett*:
"Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it."
Google discworld reading order, pick a storyline that is similar to genres you like (the guard books are copper fiction, the Lipwig books are inverted heist novels, the Rincewind books are classic fantasy by way of Oxford University culture, etc.)
Start with the City Watch series of Discworld. If you like Guards! Guards! then you'll like the next books. After reading a couple of them I'd start branching into other series.
Funny - I was just thinking* about some of what you've described. In my book, a great deal of what a certain group of predators and naive individuals consider "capitalism" is hollowed of its core. Hollowed of aspects those who truly understand and have faith and respect for capitalism - well-founded faith and respect - generally consider essential.
People like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are / were far closer to sound / faithful capitalists than most seem to be, lately:
Those who stress the idea that "greed is good" set themselves (and, unfortunately, the rest of us, as well) up for misery and the kinds of instability / inequality / tightrope walk that may culminate in events like the Reign of Terror (one example that always comes to my mind, at least - a la Les Misérables, for example [but, so much more than 'just' that theatrical version of events]).
* ~3 hours ago - and, not a common thought at all for me (though thinking about economics in general is common)
My favorite move, in God's** (actual) 4D chess game (playing off our ... tendencies, say), is when we try to introduce a species to get some benefit / value from it ...
There are plenty of further examples where attempts to remove invasive species have backfired in other ways as well...
But, ya gotta admire that indefatigable optimism!
To be fair and try for a degree of accuracy, we have obviously benefited, in the short term, greatly from technology, engineering, science, etc. ... But, there are certain areas where we do have an abysmal track record. Just about anything abstractly related to the so-called "gray goo" scenario being a prime example. Just like that recursive function you're SURE is limited no matter preconditions ... that takes down one of the main university computer systems the first time it's run... (back in the ol' days when there were fewer 'protectives' [codpieces being out of style even at that time ;)])
** For a suitable value of "God" (i.e., insert whatever term you use for everything ... the universe, the matrix, whatever... the relative personification of that particular word works better here, I think)
Hey now, how can you guarantee p(Picasso) or p(Hendrix) is 0 for all readers of your comment?*
In any case, I think your response and multiple similar responses make the essential point(s). One of the useful 'results' from decades of R&D at trying to build machines (&/ "software" - may be considered another type of machine) has been 'seeing' the difficulty in practice at achieving capabilities we (and many other animals ... even, say, nematodes**) absolutely take for granted.
One of the old jokes I always associate with Groucho Marx is something like:
"Can you play the piano?" ... "I don't know, I've never tried"
It reminds me of how people often say "foreign languages are difficult" ... As though any "native language" is somehow different / easy / easier ... Entirely neglecting the tens of thousands of hours of experience and practice most people have with some "native language" by the time they're a mere 10 years old. AND, we all continue to "practice" whatever language we speak and think (to some degree) in every hour of every day.
It's all in what you put your time into, as you get at, as well. And, one particularly crucial aspect is what you believe about how skill "arises" which you reference as well. One of the greatest disservices to (young, especially) people is inculcating them with the idea of "talent." While most people are not likely capable of becoming, say, the top tennis player (male / female) in the world - there are all sorts of variables - too often people are artificially limited by nonsense that passes as "common wisdom" and permeates "culture" (ideas that just propagate from some people to others - here, especially, parents to children).
It's interesting, to me, that while my mom, for example, was an incredible "believer" in education, and had defied her own parents and exceeded the role(s) they envisioned for her by many orders of magnitude, she also would often reference "talent" in various contexts when I was growing up.
We are riddled with nonsense - in our heads. I know for sure that I'll always be full of internal inconsistencies and false beliefs and the like. But, it is very helpful to escape as many of them as possible. Particularly those that artificially constrain us - a species limited enough as-is.***
* Where symbols "Picasso" & "Hendrix" are understood / defined 'in the usual / obvious way' - in terms of equivalence in impact / fame / etc.
** See recent articles on mapping of "neural network" / nervous system structure of C. elegans, for example
*** I write this not to disparage our species but simply to highlight the fact that we are constrained just like all other species by our form(s) and what is optimized by the process of natural selection and such ...
Talent is very real. Any teacher will confirm this. Give some five year olds something new to do and some will get it immediately. Others will never get it, no matter much how effort they put in. In between those extremes most will get it eventually, but only after struggling with it.
Most domain have hard skill cut-offs. As in math - I've known otherwise intelligent people who just cannot get how basic algebra and trig work. At all. No amount of patient explanation made a difference. They just couldn't do it.
There's a very real natural ceiling on ability. For some people/skills it's pretty low, for others it's so high you can barely see it.
The problem in this culture isn't that talent is a discouraging myth, it's that most of the population doesn't get anywhere those limits.
A lot of native ability is wasted. Most people could do a lot more given the time and resources.
I agree. My earlier comment is really about maximizing ability within your range of natural capabilities with a qualifier stating that most people’s ceiling is higher than they would expect.
> It's interesting, to me, that while my mom, for example, was an incredible "believer" in education, and had defied her own parents and exceeded the role(s) they envisioned for her by many orders of magnitude, she also would often reference "talent" in various contexts when I was growing up.
Do you see a conflict? Talent provides an upper bound on what you can gain from education.
