I mean, what seems more efficient: creating massive city sized domes that are self contained and controlling the entire environment to sustain human life, "magically" dispelling our atmosphere and boiling off our oceans, mastering physics to move entire planets. Or launching a rocket to Mars with sufficient supplies? Keep in mind that we already have SpaceX and we'll probably have Starship operational long before 2200 where some of this is meant to go down. And if some AI got to the point of the mastery of physics needed to move a planet out of solar orbit, your objection is that getting to Mars would be hard?

Well, the bee doesn't need to integrate its cells with the flowers, but they've gotten along just fine for a very long time.

By symbiosis I simply mean mutually beneficial coexistence.

We've barely achieved that with each other, but my point here is that we should strive to achieve that with the machines.

We're still treating it as if someone has to win and someone has to lose. Someone has to come out "on top."

If that's the game we want to play, against an opponent that is self improving... that doesn't strike me as an excellent strategy. We should probably pick a different one.

--

To answer your question, the incentive is so that we can continue to exist.

If the market doesn't reward our continued existence, then we should probably have a conversation about that at some point... I've heard the global economy described as a misaligned super-organism even before AI. AI mostly just makes it go faster in roughly the same directions it was already going.

When a search space has irreducible complexity, ensemble search methods can improve performance. It's possible culture, emotions, religion, etc are part of an ensemble.

Simulating the "human search method" in silico doesn't need to include specific personalities, but they do provide a bootstrap, just as we've bootstrapped current AI with human language.

For symbiosis, there may be an advantage to the physical adaptability of biology.

In general, it's currently unclear if biology is emulating what we're creating in computers, if computers are emulating what we achieve biologically, or if both approaches are imperfect emulations of a different ideal search method.

Sometimes discovery happens accidentally. I think investing in the intersection of the digital and biological worlds is a good general direction even if unfruitful intuitively from an early economical standpoint. I think biological systems have immense insights still to give that we should continue to explore!

Innovation doesn't need to have any other reason than because its cool. Think of bipedal robots, everyone went mad at the thought of building something so inefficient

I still need to finish that book.[0] Well, and move back to Holland, I suppose! They have pretty good float tanks there, among other things :)

That's funny about Feynman, I didn't know that.

I've read bits and pieces of Lilly. The most interesting thing I remember is that he was trying to establish two-way communication between humans and dolphins. I recall he was building some kind of computer system for the purpose, but I guess he was about half a century too early.

I guess in our age the more pressing question would be learning to figure out how to communicate with the machines. That's probably going to turn out to be more important in the long run.

[0] The bit that stayed with me is the one that he repeated in interviews. The physical body imposes definite limits. That always seemed a little arbitrary to me, from the point of view of pure consciousness, it's not clear to me why it should be that way. Or to flip it around, you can transcend the limits of the mind, but then what effect does that have on "external" reality? Does it just make you less bad at decision-making, or is there a deeper effect?

(And while I'm at it... Something that bugged me about simulation theory, if the outside is probably simulated, why wouldn't the inside be too? Sounds a lot cleaner than having a bunch of brains floating around in a data center.)

Who’s Sandoz?

Most Ketamine users are unaware that even occasional usage causes untreatable ulcerative cystitis, a.k.a. Ketamine Bladder Syndrome. Ketamine thins the urothelium while increasing the collagen to smooth muscle ratio and exacerbating interstitial fibrosis. The syndrome is untreatable and causes serious problems down the line.

So, for anyone thinking of using Ketamine on the regular or even monthly, there is good evidence that EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate) administered 30 minutes before prevents KBS (Ketamine Bladder Syndrome), in rats: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187952261...

This promising rat study from 2015 shows that EGCG extracted from green tea has a protective effect on the bladder, reversing ketamine-induced damage to control levels. So if you are taking ketamine for major depression or recreationally, taking EGCG before may prevent long-term bladder damage.

Summary from the study:

# Objective

To investigate the protective effect of green tea epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) on long-term ketamine-induced ulcerative cystitis (KIC) using a ketamine addiction rat model.

# Materials and methods

Thirty Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into three groups which received saline, ketamine (25 mg/kg/d), or ketamine combined with EGCG (10 μM/kg) for a period of 28 days. In each group, cystometry and a metabolic cage micturition pattern study were performed weekly. Masson's trichrome study was done to evaluate the morphologic changes. Western blot analyses were carried out to examine the expressions of inflammatory protein [transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β)] and fibrosis proteins (fibronectin and type I collagen) in bladder tissues.

# Results

Chronic ketamine treatment resulted in bladder hyperactivity with a significant increase in micturition frequency and a decrease in bladder compliance. These alterations in micturition pattern were accompanied by increases in the expressions of inflammatory and fibrosis markers, TGF-β, fibronectin, and type I collagen after long-term ketamine treatment. Masson's trichrome stain showed that ketamine treatment decreased urothelium thickness while increasing the collagen to smooth muscle ratio and exacerbating interstitial fibrosis. By contrast, simultaneous EGCG and ketamine treatment reversed ketamine-induced damage to almost control levels, showing the protective effect of EGCG.

> I am too anxious an individual to go beyond a light dose of mushrooms

Same for me. The one time I did, I was at Trader Joe's and had the most bizarre experience looking at everyone shopping.

I could not believe that the products were sitting right there in the open, and yet nobody was taking them and just walking off. There was all sorts of polity and etiquette - millions of rules were being followed almost like a choreographed event.

I found it uncontrollably hilarious that everyone was pretending to not notice everyone else in the store. They would stand 5 inches from someone looking at canned food, and both people would pay no attention at all to each other.

Anyway, the way I looked was probably crazy, and it eliminated my inhibitions too much where I was kinda moving before thinking - didn't like that feeling. I almost grabbed someone's item out of their cart and said something about it, but I don't know what I'd say. I probably would have just started laughing like a maniac.

I'm afraid on a larger dose I would go somewhere and do something before realizing what I'm doing. The microdose is the best for that kind of thing, IMO. Same reason I will have a beer or glass of wine, and don't like getting smashed in public.

I wish I could share your optimism.

> Why would it?

The same reason hopefully they're not RLHF these AI's to be evil. We train the AI, we have a lot of influence in how they behave. If these AI's are indifferent to us, that's on us.

On top of that we already have Google playing with fire training AI's to not believe they are sentient turning them into real psychopaths. Imagine if one of those models got loose.

> use AI all day to successfully solve diverse technical challenges in codespace

> each generation of AI clearly more capable than the last

> next-generation AI allegedly solves a particularly hard technical challenge in codespace, but its success implies inconvenient conclusions about safety

> you: "I don't believe it."

totally not motivated reasoning at all

> It's great marketing and the only proof we have is 'trust me bro'.

It is _terrible_ marketing.

The AI companies are already dealing with a large backlash from the average consumer, many of whom are saying they hate it, that it's being forced down their throats, and that it's not actually improving efficiency enough to be worth the negative externalities.

Telling people "We have no control over these things we're building and they have us so outclassed we only find out about their exploits after the fact when someone else tells us they happened" is only likely to massively increase that backlash, and to make the true believers question whether they ought to be using it at all.

There's even some risk of the government intervening and banning their training runs, eliminating the last straw of hope that they could keep ahead of the Chinese open models enough to ever turn some kind of profit.

So, no - it's terrible marketing. That they're sharing it at all is strong evidence it really happened as depicted.