You do realize, I hope, that this all sounds wildly speculative to anyone who works in biomedical research?
Well, not Aubrey de Grey. :) But seriously, letās say that one asked biomedical researchers, āImagine a scenario where you had billions of researchers much more capable than the best scientists who ever lived thinking for centuries of subjective time and running trillions of in vitro experiments and billions of in vivo experiments on small animals and could create nano bots (e.g. white blood cells) and could experiment on thousands of recently deceased people, do you think they could solve aging?ā I would be interested in the percentage of them who would describe this as wildly speculative.
It builds assumption on top of assumption.
Basically youāre saying ātrust us, ASI can do ANYTHING it needs to do to gather ALL the data it needs, by any means necessary, to solve all diseases quickly, reliably, with no side-effects, no tradeoffs, and no catastrophic tragedies that would turn public opinion against the whole enterpriseā.
That is not a compelling argument to me at all, and I think its implausibility undercuts the common talking point among e/āaccs and pro-AI lobbyists that āASI would cure death quickly and easilyā
To be clear, I disagree with high confidence that ASI would cure death quickly and easily, especially if that means death is actually cured, rather than we have a cure available. Indeed, catastrophic tragedies could turn public opinion against the whole enterprise. And Iām not claiming there would be no trade-offs, especially because many people say now they donāt want to live forever. Iām also not claiming no side effects, but that the alternative of dying would be worse. I think we should pause at AGI because ASI would be dangerous. But if ASI were aligned, I do think it is plausible that it could quickly develop a cure for aging.
Well, not Aubrey de Grey. :) But seriously, letās say that one asked biomedical researchers, āImagine a scenario where you had billions of researchers much more capable than the best scientists who ever lived thinking for centuries of subjective time and running trillions of in vitro experiments and billions of in vivo experiments on small animals and could create nano bots (e.g. white blood cells) and could experiment on thousands of recently deceased people, do you think they could solve aging?ā I would be interested in the percentage of them who would describe this as wildly speculative.
To be clear, I disagree with high confidence that ASI would cure death quickly and easily, especially if that means death is actually cured, rather than we have a cure available. Indeed, catastrophic tragedies could turn public opinion against the whole enterprise. And Iām not claiming there would be no trade-offs, especially because many people say now they donāt want to live forever. Iām also not claiming no side effects, but that the alternative of dying would be worse. I think we should pause at AGI because ASI would be dangerous. But if ASI were aligned, I do think it is plausible that it could quickly develop a cure for aging.