[jprete]

Quite a few have succeeded in conquering large fractions of the Earth's population: Napoleon, Hitler, Genghis Khan, the Roman emperors, Alexander the Great, Mao Zedong. America and Britain as systems did so for long periods of time.

All of these entities would have been enormously more powerful with access to an AGI's immortality, sleeplessness, and ability to clone itself.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I can see what you're trying to say, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how an AGI would have helped Alexander the Great.

[jprete]

Alexander the Great made his conquests by building a really good reputation for war, then leveraging it to get tribute agreements while leaving the local governments intact. This is a good way to do it when communication lines are slow and unreliable, because the emperor just needs to check tribute once a year to enforce the agreements, but it's weak control.

If Alexander could have left perfectly aligned copies of himself in every city he passed, he could have gotten much more control and authority, and still avoided a fight by agreeing to maintain the local power structure with himself as the new head of state.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Oh, you're assuming an entire networking infrastructure as well. That makes way more sense, but the miracle there isn't AGI - without networking they'd lose alignment over time. Honestly, I feel like it would devolve in a patchwork of different kingdoms run by an Alexander figurehead... where have I seen this before?

The problem you're proposing could be solved via a high quality cellular network.

[anon84873628]

And of course the more society is wired up and controlled by computer systems, the more the AGI could directly manage it.