Comment by abraxas
2 days ago
Yeah, except that future doesn't need us. By us I mean those of us who don't have $1B to their name.
Do you really expect the oligarchs to put up with the environmental degradation of 8 billion humans when they can have a pristine planet to themselves with their whims served by the AI and these robots?
I fully anticipate that when these things mature enough we'll see an "accidental" pandemic sweep and kill off 90% of us. At least 90%.
I'd expect Musk and Bezos to know about von Neumann replicators; factories that make these robots staffed entirely by these robots all the way to the mines digging minerals out of the ground… rapid and literally exponential growth until they hit whatever the limiting factor is, but they've both got big orbial rockets now, so the limit isn't necessarily 6e24 kg.
Oligarchs would use the robots to kill people instead of a pandemic. A virus carries too much risk of affecting the original creators.
Fortunately, robotic capability like that basically becomes the equivalent of Nuclear MAD.
Unfortunately, the virus approach probably looks fantastic to extremist bad actors with visions of an afterlife.