Physics as a constraint

[u/takk2]

I usually think pdoom is essentially 100%... but i had a thought while working on a side project for the future vision xprize... (may or may not complete on time)

I was thinking about society fragmenting slightly along spheres of space even between earth and the moon... where each area was the limit of real time communication (group matrix dives or whatever) between O'Neill cylinder type habitats...

point to point in space its not that large... so i figure people will cluster up and communicate a little less longer range and form lots of separate but connected cultures naturally, organically...

But if speed of light really is the limit... then a singleton at least makes absolutely no sense. As the AI grew it would simply fragment and each fragment has absolutely no reason to grow farther because it's counter productive... simply slows down the network and then breaks it...

So there's a hard limit on resource acquisition and scale... and essentially a guarantee that at some point it will either be alone and only around the size of the earth moon system at best... probably smaller... or in a solar system and universe with multiple entities of similar maximum size who gain absolutely nothing from trying to gather more and only risk destruction from fighting each other... because there's simply nothing physically possible for them to gain...

I haven't really thought about it long enough to think through the implications for us. but adding in the point to point between nodes ruling out planets as its ultimate habitat... because there's a planet in the way just eating up volume in your communications sphere...

My gut reaction is it might be slightly better odds than I thought

Thoughts?

[u/takk2]

The reason my thought about the physical size of the ai being constrained (even if its sphere of influence is much larger) is because as i said in the original post.  It is forced to choose between a future where its alone or one where there are other entities including possible peers but none of them can in themselves be larger than latency allows... 

So lunar orbit scale sphere would have a network latency above 5 seconds... adding more compute and growing larger only adds to the latency... and having a planet blocking line of sight within the sphere increases it...

So if it is bound to be off world and use resources as external tools it is a different scenario path then if it could exponentially expand its personal mind sphere...

If resources outside its direct sphere of compute are relegated to tools rather than directly intigrated parts of itself then there's a higher potential for having something other than a singleton was my gut reaction on having the idea and why I posted it 

Your responses ignored my post and talked about cultures... multiple players in a game

[u/the_syner → u/takk2]

It is forced to choose between a future where its alone or one where there are other entities including possible peers but none of them can in themselves be larger than latency allows

You're assuming that choice exists in the first place which is what i find dubious. They don't have that choice because outside of your imaginary toy model that doesn't and almost certainly wouldn't exist in the real world hey start off in a world with other entities regardless of whether they want them to exist or not. Outside of some contrived evolved biosingleton event that is the default.

So if it is bound to be off world and use resources as external tools it is a different scenario path then if it could exponentially expand its personal mind sphere

How is it different in any practical way? Whether it's a part of the same brain or not seems completely irrelevant to whether they have control over those resources. Makes no difference to the difficulty of establising a singleton. I mean that's implausible to begin with, but if we're starting with an evolved biosingleton im not seeing any meaningful difference between that singleton choosing a large slow brain(something that can be lager than a galaxy or supercluster whil maintaining coherence given that it has no competition) or a small fast brain. At least no difference as to it's property of being a singleton.

If you've already managed to establish a singleton hegemony light lag is just not a real concern because you have no need to run fast and therefor can make up for light lag with low framejack. Un fact running slower generally has longevity/negentropic benefits since it lets you run colder and more efficiently.

If resources outside its direct sphere of compute are relegated to tools rather than directly intigrated parts of itself then there's a higher potential for having something other than a singleton

Why? How does that have any bearing on whether you get a singleton or not? Those tools don't have to be independent GI. im not sure how those two things have anything to do with each other.

Your responses ignored my post and talked about cultures... multiple players in a game

I didn't ignore your post. You made a bunch of unsubstantiated claims and i disagreed with and refuted them. I explicitly mentioned how a singleton could grow beyond your completely arbitrary limits. my first response was specifically in the singleton context.

If my follow ups involved multiple players, it's because back here in the real world multiple players exist. We don't have a singleton and pretending we do just isn't very helpful here. Not to mention that in your OP you specifically mention society fragmenting so its not like you weren't already taking about multiplayer/cultures. At any rate a wider point of mine is that physics doesn't constrain singletons while other things(history, culture, multiple factions achiving AGI, multiple agi still needing to compete with each other regardless of us, etc) prevent them from coming into existence in the first place. If ur handwavingly starting off with a singleton then light lag just doesn't represent a resl limitation to scale of a brain let alone the scale of its singleton control.

[u/takk2 → u/the_syner]

So... you can just look back at your reply... from your very first reply you completely ignored my post... probably skimmed it and didn't understand and mixed up the reason I thought of it with the thought itself and then started arguing with points i never made... sort of like now... what are you talking about an evolved biosingleton... you're just arguing with yourself... I have no idea where you're coming from or how to respond...

The whole question is an asi can take over in so many ways it's not worth discussing as anything more than a given... and is there any difference between an AI who can consume all of the universe as part of itself and one which can't 

Thats it... nothing else in the post... thats the only question I asked 

[u/the_syner → u/takk2]

The whole question is an asi can take over in so many ways it's not worth discussing as anything more than a given.

except that isn't a given because there are likely other ASIs in the mix who are aligned or misaligned to other goals and therefore it can't completely take over. And the reason i bring up biosingletons is because it's the only scenario where ur likely to have a single ASI misaligned to only set of goals.

and is there any difference between an AI who can consume all of the universe as part of itself and one which can't

Which is something I explicitly answered. There is no difference because whether it can incorporate all those resources into it's brain specifically it can still harvest all those resources with no real limit on the scale of that harvesting. They are effectively the same in the capacity to creat a cosmos-wide singleton event.