Nick Bostrom

So even if we had enough compute to run an AGI, a human level AI, we might not have enough compute to sort of create it.

I think also, though, in addition to more compute, we also need some additional algorithmic insights.

But it's not all or nothing.

The better the algorithms, the less compute you need to achieve this result.

And right now, the amount of compute you need would be way more than we can currently afford.

And then it comes down as we make algorithmic progress.

At the same time as our computers become faster, at some point these lines will intersect.

The brains are really not working even after.

As a kind of collective, we have just kind of barely, you know, intelligence to create a technological civilization.

I think we look like we're right on the cusp of that.

And it's not so surprising maybe because like, if you imagine our ancestors had a lot less abstract reasoning ability and it gradually improved over time.

biological time scales right and then as soon as we became capable of creating a technological civilization then we pretty much did it or after you know 10 000 years or something so so we should kind of maybe expect that we are at the lower end of what is needed to do this at all and that maybe explains some of what we see in the world that we're kind of fumbling our way a lot of what we see in the world yes yes

Well, so first, there's no particular reason to think that those 10 million years were simulated.

You don't need to do it from the Big Bang onwards.

You could start the simulation from a later point.

I mean, you probably don't want to sit through like 10 billion years of just gas clouds congealing.

Like that would be a pretty wasteful.

It's kind of boring, right?

But even when you get into the... Say they were interested in all of human history, for the sake of the argument, that that's 10,000 years onward.

It doesn't mean that for them it would take 10,000 years to do this.