Re: Singularity in 18 months?/ hardware fab latency

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Wed, 16 Jun 1999 15:15:58 -0500

Doug Jones wrote:
>
> By the way, Eliezer, I have a question/quibble/objection to your
> doubled doubling description of the singularity: it ignores hardware
> development cycles. Certainly a fully functional AI could improve
> its own software, but the runaway would be damped by the hardware
> design and fabrication process- smarter code also needs faster
> hardware to run at faster subjective speed.

Do you know that there's an STM connected to the Internet? I don't know about protein-synthesis machines being connected to the Internet - but if you're willing to go through snail-mail, you can write a DNA sequence, email it to someone who mails you the DNA, then send the DNA to a protein synthesizer in, what, about a week? Probably less if you're an AI and you're willing to pay for FedEx overnight.

Ever wonder if there's a back door into Zyvex's laboratory equipment somewhere, with a password only an AI could crack? That's what *I'd* do.

-- 
           sentience@pobox.com          Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
        http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS           Typing in Dvorak          Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians   Heading for Singularity   There Is A Better Way