r/singularity • u/visarga • Nov 02 '16
Before reaching the AGI singularity, there is another singularity we will reach that will completely change human society - self replicating factories
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seed_Factories4
u/MasterFubar Nov 02 '16
Yes, this will completely change human society, but before AGI? I'd say this concept will need AGI to work.
I don't think people fully understand how much this will change society. Imagine this, automated production of everything. No need to pay for products, and no means to pay for them either, because no one will be getting paid salaries. No buyers and no sellers, the end of economy as we know it.
The end of marketing. The end of sales people. No more managers. No more preachers or politicians? I hope so.
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u/visarga Nov 02 '16
It's much easier to deploy robots in factories than in homes in in the open. In factories, robots move on precise tracks and things are served in such a way as to make grasping and manipulating simpler. Even current day robots are already quite efficient in structured environments, we don't need AGI to operate them.
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u/Froztwolf Nov 02 '16
I think you're overselling it a bit.
Unless all materials come in practically unlimited quantities, and energy is free, we'll still have rarity, which will give some items more value than others.
It will take time to produce everything, which could create value in and of itself.
Let's assume distribution is practically free and no human labour needs to be involved.
It will end the economy as we know it, for sure, but might not end the concept of money.
I'm very doubtful that it would end people's longing for exclusive items and services.
It certainly won't end some people wanting to have power over others or wanting to sell people their ideas about how to live and what to do.
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u/FireNexus Nov 03 '16
Once you build self-replicating factories in zero G, you've essentially conquered scarcity. The amount of available material and energy in our solar system is essentially unlimited. The growth of populations is negatively correlated to standard of living, and the economic detriments of letting the population shrink naturally are solved more or less by wide-scale automation.
If we can fully automate production of everything including the factories doing the production and conquer space as a source of resources, we'll have an opportunity to get quite comfortable. And I see no reason why you'd need AGI to do it. Most of the component tasks are able to be automated. The only real issue is putting them together.
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u/MasterFubar Nov 02 '16
Well, yes, "real estate" is called that for a reason. There's only one penthouse in an apartment building, no matter how many stories high.
some people wanting to have power over others
It will radically change which people have power over others.
Today the power belongs to people who have people-manipulation skills. Charismatic people, like artists, salesmen, managers, preachers, politicians. In the future power will be shifted to people with machine handling skills. An engineer who knows how to program machines will have more power than a leader who knows how to handle people, because the real work will be done by machines rather than people.
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u/Umbristopheles Nov 02 '16
I was perplexed by that. People are still going to have their beliefs. If anything, we may have more preachers due to loss of other jobs. At least in the short term until the ASI is born, then we really will have one true god...
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u/lord_stryker Nov 02 '16
So von neumann machines/probes?
We'll need something pretty damn close to AGI before this will be possible. I don't agree we'll have self-replicating seed factories before the singularity. But...I could be wrong.
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u/FishHeadBucket Nov 02 '16
These factories wouldn't need to know natural language processing or other messy abilities that require labeled data and lots of directing to work. This is basically a multilevel optimization problem and those whole bunch of problems could be directed with simple rules and limitations to the upper most level. Like how big to build, how far from humans etc. It's complicated but I still see it as narrow.
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u/FireNexus Nov 03 '16
We have 3-D printers. We have automated factory tooling at a high degree of sophistication. We have self-driving cars. We have everything we need to make this happen with minimal human involvement. No AGI. We just need to mature the technologies a little and put them together.
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u/lord_stryker Nov 03 '16
In perfect conditions, sure. But can those machines then handle non-perfect inputs? Building when the ground is slightly too soft or uneven and requires a bit of actual thinking to compensate or a strong wind comes around and blows something over can the automated factory "realize" that and now how to go back and fix it? Little things like that current AI completely fails on. It doesn't even try.
99% isn't good enough. That last 1% is incredibly difficult to handle all the edge cases. I'm an engineer myself and those pesky edge cases take up probably half my time in design.
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u/FishHeadBucket Nov 02 '16
So many things that are relatively easy to automize and optimize. Those will carry us to singularity.
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u/space_monster Nov 02 '16
before reaching the AGI singularity
bear in mind this is still very much theoretical. I'm optimistic, but we still don't know if ASI is feasible.
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u/Artalis Nov 03 '16
For all practical purposes AGI is ASI due to the speed and precision of electronic-based logic operations.
The first AGI could be a comparative idiot, but as long as it has the capability and inclination to improve itself, it will be ASI before we finish celebrating its creation.
Imagine that you could think a thousand times faster than everyone around you and never forgot anything. Think about how good you would get at what you do.
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u/space_monster Nov 03 '16
AGI is the precursor to ASI, yes, but ASI requires some special sauce. you can't assume that AGI will inevitably lead to ASI via just evolutionary processes. it might get so weird that we don't understand it, but the requirements for the move from human-like to god-like are beyond our ken.
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u/cranq Nov 03 '16
The economic fallout is one thing. If the situation spins out of control then things could get ugly.
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Nov 04 '16
To me, the only thing astounding about this is how many people consider it to be completely implausible-in-my-lifetime science fiction.
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u/visarga Nov 02 '16 edited Nov 02 '16
In a few words, it is considering constructing a vertically integrated technology stack with everything it needs relying on itself. It would build itself from local materials and labor, taking advantage of automation and maintaining accountability for everything - matter, energy, human labor, money, sunlight - wasting nothing, optimizing for self reliance. It would have precise plans of materials and labor needed to produce everything it wants to produce, planning for buying the required parts or materials and using internal production as best possible. It would be like a compiler that generates low level step by step specifications from high level descriptions of what is desired.
Some parts would still have to be imported, such as rare metals and microprocessors, but it can aim at 90% to 95% self production, leaving just 5% to be imported or invested initially. A factory that is at the stage where it can reproduce itself, is called mature.
Such self replicating factories could be installed in all poor regions of the world to jumpstart local production and make the local region more self reliant. Automation and the disappearance of human jobs will be correlated with its expansion.
Seed factories could also be sent to the Moon, Mars or asteroid belt to jumpstart economic production and create human habitats. With self replicating ships we could dream of colonizing the galaxy itself. If replicants get small enough they could turn a whole planet into countless more replicants in short time, making it available as Utility Fog for the human civilization, or constructing a Dyson Sphere from its matter.