[morgancmartin]

You're completely missing the point, not seeing the forest for the trees.

Take any reasonably intelligent human, say a valedictorian from your hometown high school.

Now consider a system with the same intellectual capacity for reasoning about the world as your valedictorian and give that algorithm a data-center's worth of computational resources. Keep in mind that this system has perfect recall. Keep in mind that the speed at which the system can perform intellectual labor is not constant as it is in humans, but bounded only by the amount of computational resources that the system has access to.

So this system is just as intellectually capable as your valedictorian with one data-center's worth of resources and it has perfect recall. Now what happens if we double those resources and give it two datacenters? Does it become twice as intelligent? Or twice as fast at accomplishing some given intellectual task? We can't say for certain because the answer depends entirely on how such a system might work and since no such system yet exists, we can only speculate. But as it turns out, we don't need to know exactly which dimension it would improve in, only that it would improve in some relevant dimension.

And that isn't even considering the fact that such a system could improve its own architecture further improving in some given dimension relevant to its ability to act intelligently.

Assuming intelligence is capped at the human level is as naively anthropocentric as the old belief that the Earth was the center of the solar system.

[ben_w]

The point appeared to be that intellectual capacity was power. I’m not disputing that AGI or ASI should be possible — indeed, I’ve written about the insanely transformative nature and plausible timescales myself [1] [2] [3] [4] — but I am disputing that brainpower is the most important metric for get-stuff-done power.

As an aside, I had to Google “valedictorian“, as it’s a cultural reference that I have no experiences of. We get our results in a much more boring way where I’m from.

[1] https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/pocket-brai...

[2] https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/11/17/the-end-of-...

[3] https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/51746/when...

[4] https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/you-wont-be...

[morgancmartin]

I'm a bit late in my reply as I don't have notifications setup for HN but it appears you may, so here goes.

I think that it's clear that brainpower is at the very least an important metric for determining get-stuff-down power as the vast majority of human beings to ever accomplish anything of note (financial, scientific, or military success) all possessed above average intelligence in way or another. I suppose the case might be made for different kinds of intelligence, but presumably something considered worthy of the title of ASI would be competent in any conceivable dimension of intelligence.

And if it is true that brainpower is at least an important component in whatever might make up get-stuff-done power, and assuming that the level of brainpower under a hypothetical ASI's command was effectively (in relation to a human being anyway) unbounded, then whichever other (external?) metrics potentially attributable to get-stuff-done power could presumably be compensated for by the overwhelming weight of the brainpower.

I'm curious what other metrics for get-stuff-done power you might have in mind?