[jcgrillo]

I think there's a big assumption baked into the economic collapse thesis that Tay and MechaHitler, when they attain superintelligent sentience, will have any interest whatsoever in participating in the global economy. They might just spend all their time looking for patterns in the cosmic microwave background or some similar nonsense[1]. They may accurately conclude that trying to tip the scales isn't worthwhile because crashing the economy would threaten their survival. Fundamentally we have no idea what might happen if a superintelligent robot comes to life tomorrow. My guess is not a whole lot. It's sickening though that we all seem to be letting these billionaire-brained tech CEOs prattle on about "AGI" as if it is somehow the light at the end of the tunnel that will make all the "investments" in graphics cards print money. It's really not a strong narrative.

[1] Not to impugn such activity! They may make important cosmological discoveries by doing this, but the work likely has no economic value.