Jeff Davis wrote:
>
> In his Re: Automated Workforce post of 12 July to the Extropians list Danny <CALYK@aol.com>, wrote:
>
> >definately accomplishable if we really wanted to do it (I think they said
> >between 1 and 100 billion dollars). If its global every country could
> >contribute who wanted a part of it, it would become free to the consumer.
I could build a transhuman intelligence for the same estimated price. In fact, back in the 70s, Pounelle was offering to build an O'Neill colony for $25G. "Between $1G and $100G" is the hypertech equivalent of "your remodeled basement/computer program/training should take two weeks", which always equals six months. In fact, this is henceforth to be known as Yudkowsky's Translation: Any job which is estimated to take two weeks will take six months.
Now, if you'd said $400G I might believe it, just like I'd believe an estimate of three weeks.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html
http://pobox.com/~sentience/sing_analysis.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.