Letās break this into two questions: 1. After a few years of ASI, will the ASI be able to stop or reverse aging? 2. After a few years of ASI, will hardly anyone die of aging related diseases? Letās tackle number one first. Itās true the ASI would not be able to do long term human trials the regular way. However, I think it could learn a lot from the data from running trillions of lab-on-a-chip experiments. I think it could develop nano bots that could remove cancer cells and repair aging related damage. And it could get quick feedback by making C. elegans, etc immortal. It might also be able to simulate biology from first principles in order to run the equivalent of decades long human trials.
I also think it could develop noninvasive (or at least non-destructive) scanning techniques that would allow someoneās consciousness to be simulated. And even if that doesnāt count, it might even be able to build up a new biological human that has equivalent consciousness to the original (which still may not count depending on oneās values). There are likely many other routes to quick longevity that I canāt think of but an ASI could.
As for the second question, would people allow the, e.g., repair nano bots into their bodies? One subquestion is whether countries would allow it. Based on current laws, probably not, though itās possible they would change quickly due to ASI (and people could go into international waters). Another subquestion is if it is legal, would people do it? Obviously some people would not, but if the alternative is a soon death, I think many people would.
Iām extremely skeptical that it would be possible to āsimulate biology from first principlesā in any computationally feasible way, given the hierarchical complexity of biology across huge range of scalesāboth spatial (from biomolecules to organelles to cells, tissues, organs, and organism) and temporal (from femtoseconds to decades). We just donāt have any āfirst principlesā in biology that are analogous to physical laws that could be used to simulate planet formation or weather.
We also donāt have the data required to ārun trillions of lab-on-a-chip experimentsā.
And I cannot imagine any situations in which ānano bots that could remove cancer cellsā could be deployed in living humans without the first several thousands patients dying in surprising and gruesome ways.
I just donāt see any of these suggestions connecting to the reality of human biomedical research.
Iām extremely skeptical that it would be possible to āsimulate biology from first principlesā in any computationally feasible way, given the hierarchical complexity of biology across huge range of scalesāboth spatial (from biomolecules to organelles to cells, tissues, organs, and organism) and temporal (from femtoseconds to decades). We just donāt have any āfirst principlesā in biology that are analogous to physical laws that could be used to simulate planet formation or weather.
It could simulate individual atoms, and work up from there. Yes, that is prohibitively computationally expensive now, but the ASI could scale up computation many OOMs and could probably model it much more efficiently than we could. It probably wouldnāt need to model all the atoms because of sub modeling the different scales you note (like we do with weather). Iām not confident that it could do this in a few years, but I think itās generally a risky bet to say that ASI canāt figure out something quickly.
We also donāt have the data required to ārun trillions of lab-on-a-chip experimentsā.
I was saying it could gather data with those experiments, e.g. testing out many different nanobots/ādrugs on many different types of tissue. Why would it need to have data in order to run the experiments?
And I cannot imagine any situations in which ānano bots that could remove cancer cellsā could be deployed in living humans without the first several thousands patients dying in surprising and gruesome ways.
It could experiment on living cancer tissue in vitro. It looks like transgenic Zebrafish get cancer in 2-4 weeks. And as I commented below, it could wait until after death to try to fixāmore than 20k people donate their body to science a year.
You do realize, I hope, that this all sounds wildly speculative to anyone who works in biomedical research?
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
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.
An option to circumvent current laws would be the person dying, and then being fixed by the tech and revived. This could be thought of as like āfast cryonics.ā
Letās break this into two questions:
1. After a few years of ASI, will the ASI be able to stop or reverse aging?
2. After a few years of ASI, will hardly anyone die of aging related diseases?
Letās tackle number one first. Itās true the ASI would not be able to do long term human trials the regular way. However, I think it could learn a lot from the data from running trillions of lab-on-a-chip experiments. I think it could develop nano bots that could remove cancer cells and repair aging related damage. And it could get quick feedback by making C. elegans, etc immortal. It might also be able to simulate biology from first principles in order to run the equivalent of decades long human trials.
I also think it could develop noninvasive (or at least non-destructive) scanning techniques that would allow someoneās consciousness to be simulated. And even if that doesnāt count, it might even be able to build up a new biological human that has equivalent consciousness to the original (which still may not count depending on oneās values). There are likely many other routes to quick longevity that I canāt think of but an ASI could.
As for the second question, would people allow the, e.g., repair nano bots into their bodies? One subquestion is whether countries would allow it. Based on current laws, probably not, though itās possible they would change quickly due to ASI (and people could go into international waters). Another subquestion is if it is legal, would people do it? Obviously some people would not, but if the alternative is a soon death, I think many people would.
Iām extremely skeptical that it would be possible to āsimulate biology from first principlesā in any computationally feasible way, given the hierarchical complexity of biology across huge range of scalesāboth spatial (from biomolecules to organelles to cells, tissues, organs, and organism) and temporal (from femtoseconds to decades). We just donāt have any āfirst principlesā in biology that are analogous to physical laws that could be used to simulate planet formation or weather.
We also donāt have the data required to ārun trillions of lab-on-a-chip experimentsā.
And I cannot imagine any situations in which ānano bots that could remove cancer cellsā could be deployed in living humans without the first several thousands patients dying in surprising and gruesome ways.
I just donāt see any of these suggestions connecting to the reality of human biomedical research.
It could simulate individual atoms, and work up from there. Yes, that is prohibitively computationally expensive now, but the ASI could scale up computation many OOMs and could probably model it much more efficiently than we could. It probably wouldnāt need to model all the atoms because of sub modeling the different scales you note (like we do with weather). Iām not confident that it could do this in a few years, but I think itās generally a risky bet to say that ASI canāt figure out something quickly.
I was saying it could gather data with those experiments, e.g. testing out many different nanobots/ādrugs on many different types of tissue. Why would it need to have data in order to run the experiments?
It could experiment on living cancer tissue in vitro. It looks like transgenic Zebrafish get cancer in 2-4 weeks. And as I commented below, it could wait until after death to try to fixāmore than 20k people donate their body to science a year.
You do realize, I hope, that this all sounds wildly speculative to anyone who works in biomedical research?
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
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.
An option to circumvent current laws would be the person dying, and then being fixed by the tech and revived. This could be thought of as like āfast cryonics.ā