[ben_w]

The upper limit for biomedicine is halting aging, ending all illnesses including cancer and congenital genetic illnesses, and being able to bioprint replacement parts not only in the event of trauma but also as a free choice for e.g. a fully functional gender swap.

Given present culture wars, that last one may cause a lot of drama all by itself no matter how good it gets. But hopefully you get the picture about how transformative it can be.

Paying for it? Well, there's a reason I chose to move to Germany rather than the USA after the Brexit referendum.

[slg]

>Paying for it? Well, there's a reason I chose to move to Germany rather than the USA after the Brexit referendum.

Does Germany have a large enough share of these companies to be on the winning side of this or is the country effectively in the same position as the average American? Just think how much could a company charge Germany to extend the life of its citizens, could Germany actually afford to pay that price especially if and when it tax base shrinks?

[ben_w]

> Just think how much could a company charge Germany to extend the life of its citizens, could Germany actually afford to pay that price especially if and when it tax base shrinks?

The time-limited and jurisdiction-limited nature of patents aside, one of the great things about being a country is you can do things like pass laws saying "we have decided to force you to sell to us at the price we specify, and if you refuse we will shoot you".

How taxes work when labour shifts to AI is anybody's guess.

[slg]

>one of the great things about being a country is you can do things like pass laws saying "we have decided to force you to sell to us at the price we specify, and if you refuse we will shoot you".

But these companies aren’t based in Germany, so you’re talking about invading other nations. It’s starting to sound like this version of the optimistic outcome is World War 3.

[ben_w]

If they want to do business in German* jurisdiction, they operate in Germany*. Doesn't matter where the HQ is, as Musk learned the hard way with the also-dramatic-but-less-so case in Brazil.

If they don't want to do business in Germany*, they don't get to file a patent in Germany*, they don't get to sue Germany* for ignoring a patent that was geographically limited to not include Germany*.

* might be "EU", I have not checked.

[irishcoffee]

Germany does not have the global influence you seem to imply.

[ben_w]

I'm saying the country doesn't need global influence. None do.

If you sell medicine to me here in Germany, you go through the German government.

If you decide not to, you inherently allow someone else to get the pantent for your tech in Germany.

Costs of medicine will get absorbed only to the extent they are considered acceptable, this is true for everyone. The biomedical firms know this, which is also why recently it is the US who pays the most for medicines.

[Perseids]

You are very conservative with the upper limits, probably because you are limiting yourself to medicine. With bioengineering the upper limits are hard to grasp. Why build a house, when you can grow one. Re-imagine all machines as custom-made biology. Why upload your conscience to silicon, when your body can be anything, your brain can experience anything, you brain can be reshaped to be anything.

How much is possible there, is only constrained in our understanding of biology. How difficult that turns out to be for a super intelligence… who knows? If we are actually on the cusp of the AI singularity, the future is going to be weird and/or wonderful and/or horrible, but definitely unimaginable different than today.

My mind is kind of shooing away from this intuitively. Too hard to believe. My whole life experience has been living in a different world. But imagine if "we" could actually create human level intelligence, say, for the price of a 100k USD/EUR/GBP. It could only do knowledge work, of course, but it would easily pay for itself and thus be mass produced. What is the market cap for cheap knowledge work? I would be surprised if it is only a billion human-equivalents, given humans find new creative ways to pay for themselves all the time. That explosion alone is mind-boggling and it does not rely on super-intelligence.

All of this should make one point clear: At no other point in history has it been more important to have our power structures be aligned with the interests of society.

[ben_w]

> You are very conservative with the upper limits, probably because you are limiting yourself to medicine. With bioengineering the upper limits are hard to grasp. Why build a house, when you can grow one. Re-imagine all machines as custom-made biology.

Sure, sure, but upthread said "biological and medical" so I was taking it that way.

> Why upload your conscience to silicon, when your body can be anything, your brain can experience anything, you brain can be reshaped to be anything.

I'd avoiding considering this one for now, simply because there's too many open questions. I don't expect it to be a physics problem, but I can't rule that out.

> All of this should make one point clear: At no other point in history has it been more important to have our power structures be aligned with the interests of society.

Yup.

Unfortunately, the human alignment problem is hard, let alone the AI alignment problem.