[KETHERCORTEX]

> he can imagine wars being fought over AI

I wonder how did he come to such a prediction. When was the last time we had a war over advanced tech? Armies didn't fight over telegraph, radio, phones and cars.

A war to get AI would also be foolish. A few hundred bombs from your adversaries and AI won't have electricity to function.

[Terr_]

> I wonder how did he come to such a prediction.

At the risk of belaboring the subtext: It's kind of prediction which flatters the predictor's ego, and exaggerates the importance of the company and its output.

If believed, the claim can be leveraged to boost investor activity, land big contracts, and lobby for special legal/tax benefits.

[richardw]

Telegraph, radio, phones, cars didn't guarantee success. Those things can't outthink you. Somewhat extreme case: let's say Israel saw that Iran was days away from getting AGI. It would instantly throw every nuke it had at Iran.

Now, scale that up to the global superpowers and near-superpowers. I wouldn't want to put money on what e.g. the U.S. would do if China was days away from AGI. There are a lot of options below going nuclear, e.g. assassinations, hacking, destruction of equipment.

Once someone has a thing that can invent, hack, assemble, strategise 24/7, replicate itself, all bets are very much off. We need to sleep, it doesn't.

[ForHackernews]

Is there any evidence that the "smarter" side wins wars? I'd put money on the faction with more soldiers and industry over more "intelligence" every single time.

How many divisions does ChatGPT have?

[ben_w]

Crudely and slowly, ChatGPT has already been demonstrated controlling a humanoid robot.

The current humanoid robot startups are talking about 100s of thousands of units, and if they're attached to an AI that's even merely normal human level (or can fake it in practice) then they can run every step of logistics and manufacturing to make more of themselves.

At 100kg/unit, Starship could pop a thousand or so on the moon per launch.

So, in such a hypothetical scenario, if you don't get this right then your war game planners will be very quickly suggesting 7.3e20 individual androids burying everyone under a 43km thick layer worldwide.

[jononor]

Modern industrial manufacturing is not done by humans but specialized machines. You cannot outcompete CNC, injection molding, and lathes with humanoid robots.

[ben_w]

Sure, but there's usually someone who replies "but humans do some of it!", which I was trying to preempt here.

(IMO humanoid robots are a sign that the startup/VC market is following Musk, who in turn happened to see one on TV just before declaring to whoever the Optimus model was going to happen: they obviously could work for all this, but equally obviously aren't the sensible choice for almost anything).

[richardw]

This is and will be increasingly a digital world. This is just an extrapolation question.

It’s repeatedly demonstrated that much of the voting public can be led by the nose to any desired conclusion. Therefore, influence via digital means, across all media. Satellite and all other digital sensing and tracking. Build a few million robots. Nukes. Control over the financial infrastructure. All vaguely smart cars. Intercept, alter or prevent any digital communication. The enemy wouldn’t be able to trust any message or video. An army without sensing, command and control, isn’t.

Besides the argument isn’t AGI vs everyone, it’s a country with AGI vs anyone else. I’d take that bet.

[onemoresoop]

>Besides the argument isn’t AGI vs everyone, it’s a country with AGI vs anyone else. I’d take that bet.

You never entertained the idea that AGI could be a destructive force and instead of a country with AGI you could have a country that devoured its people?

[richardw]

My base case is we can’t control it. I was responding to people who seem to underestimate superintelligence, so referring to “the argument”. If AGI goes postal, everyone is at risk. If it doesn’t, the side with it wins. The odds of it only harming the country that has it, seems extremely slim.

[ForHackernews]

If superintelligence is all it takes, why do you think to date no unscrupulous Nobel laureate has taken over the world and enslaved the rest of humanity?

[throwthrowuknow]

You have to look at the late 1800s for examples. It won’t be wars over data centres and winning won’t be simple or even possible. It would look like the wars that the U.S. Army fought against indian tribes or like the British, French, German and Dutch colonization of Africa. That is assuming there is an AI side and a non-AI side. Incidentally those conflicts did involve a lot of strategic infrastructure like railways and telegraph lines.

Fighting the expansionary actions of an AI enabled culture will not be as simple as bombing power plants, after all those are prime targets in any modern war and are well defended. How do you propose to win against an entire bloc of countries that have decided to use the products of AI to do whatever they wish with the world?

[empath75]

It's arguable that every major conflict of the 20th century was over resources required by the combustion engine -- fossil fuels and rubber, in particular.