While I agree that strong founder effects are likely to apply if SpaceX and/​or NASA succeed in establishing a Mars colony, I expect that colony to be Earth-dependent for decades, and to be quite vulnerable to being superseded by other actors.
To put my model in more concrete terms: I expect whoever controls cislunar space in 2050 to have more potential for causal influence over the state of Mars in 2100 than whoever has put more people on Mars by 2040.
Interestingly, the singularity could actually have the opposite effect. Where originally human exploration of the Solar System was decades away, extremely intelligent AI could speed up technology to where it’s all possible within a decade.
The space policy landscape is not ready for that at all. There is no international framework for governing the use of space resources, and human exploration is still technically illegal on Mars due to contamination of the surface (and the moon! Yes we still care a lot).
So I lean more towards superintelligent AI being a reason to care more about space, not less. Will Macaskill discusses it in more detail here.
While I agree that strong founder effects are likely to apply if SpaceX and/​or NASA succeed in establishing a Mars colony, I expect that colony to be Earth-dependent for decades, and to be quite vulnerable to being superseded by other actors.
To put my model in more concrete terms: I expect whoever controls cislunar space in 2050 to have more potential for causal influence over the state of Mars in 2100 than whoever has put more people on Mars by 2040.
I tentatively agree with that, I just expect those to be the same person.
I would expect those to be the same person if AI turns out to not be a huge deal, which for me is about 25% of futures.
Yes, I’m conditioning on no singularity here.
Interestingly, the singularity could actually have the opposite effect. Where originally human exploration of the Solar System was decades away, extremely intelligent AI could speed up technology to where it’s all possible within a decade.
The space policy landscape is not ready for that at all. There is no international framework for governing the use of space resources, and human exploration is still technically illegal on Mars due to contamination of the surface (and the moon! Yes we still care a lot).
So I lean more towards superintelligent AI being a reason to care more about space, not less. Will Macaskill discusses it in more detail here.