> I agree that there are lots of signals, but I think they are all have roughly the same weakness, which is sort of "non-response bias" in polls and similar for social media. You can aggregate lots of things to reduce sampling noise, but you still have to use guesswork to compensate for that bias, so the bias never really goes away. The only visible signal for that bias is actual election outcomes. But those are pretty sparse and the world is constantly changing, so I don't think it would be possible to build a very accurate model.
I'm probably entering arguing-over-angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin territory here, but my intuition is that the Being's approach wouldn't much resemble "aggregating signals", it would be diving in and engaging in millions of concrete details to create and validate a high-resolution model of the voting-age public. For instance, 100,000 separate case studies of individual voters based on an analysis of their social media posts; information about those individuals from data brokers, LinkedIn, etc.; cross-referenced against things like "this person works for a company that, based on <some signal>, appears to be downsizing"; basically a detailed triangulation of thousands (millions?) of individual voters. It wouldn't be able to ground-truth this work against past elections, but I still suspect it would find ways to come out ahead in the prognostication game (and it would find ways to learn _something_ from past elections, especially the most recent). Possibly it could ground-truth more or less the full project against the most very recent elections, including the 2024 primaries at all levels (not just presidential).
Or, and hear me out, it might think of an approach that wouldn't occur to either of us.
> What would be your best guess for how AI might make a "very fast" jump to power? I guess "ultimate diplomat" and "ultimate computer hacker" seem like the most plausible?
Depends so much on starting conditions, including the level of scrutiny it's under and whether it has rivals. Assuming your IQ-300 10,000x-speed Being, and assuming it has no near-peer AI rivals and manages to evade any direct monitoring... my "favorite" (ugh) scenario is basically "ultimate crime lord", using a combination of diplomacy, extortion, hacking, and merely smart business moves (all of which support one another, e.g. hacking to get data to support the other three pillars) to rapidly accumulate wealth and leverage. Basically following a trajectory a bit like SBF or Musk, but, you know, smarter and able to pursue many more avenues at once (including illegal avenues). It feels like this could escalate very rapidly? Like, build a $100M stake by finding some low-hanging crypto scam or launching a viral business or something (all through intermediaries of course), and then... I don't know how to guess at the doubling time for its level of resources but maybe kinda fast? (Look again at SBF / Musk / Trump, and consider that it could be much more strategic, would have many more options available, and could pursue many more agendas at once.)
Strongly encourage you to basically take your thoughts from these comments and make them into a post. Your concept of "relationship-building" in particular has really stuck with me.
> I agree that there are lots of signals, but I think they are all have roughly the same weakness, which is sort of "non-response bias" in polls and similar for social media. You can aggregate lots of things to reduce sampling noise, but you still have to use guesswork to compensate for that bias, so the bias never really goes away. The only visible signal for that bias is actual election outcomes. But those are pretty sparse and the world is constantly changing, so I don't think it would be possible to build a very accurate model.
I'm probably entering arguing-over-angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin territory here, but my intuition is that the Being's approach wouldn't much resemble "aggregating signals", it would be diving in and engaging in millions of concrete details to create and validate a high-resolution model of the voting-age public. For instance, 100,000 separate case studies of individual voters based on an analysis of their social media posts; information about those individuals from data brokers, LinkedIn, etc.; cross-referenced against things like "this person works for a company that, based on <some signal>, appears to be downsizing"; basically a detailed triangulation of thousands (millions?) of individual voters. It wouldn't be able to ground-truth this work against past elections, but I still suspect it would find ways to come out ahead in the prognostication game (and it would find ways to learn _something_ from past elections, especially the most recent). Possibly it could ground-truth more or less the full project against the most very recent elections, including the 2024 primaries at all levels (not just presidential).
Or, and hear me out, it might think of an approach that wouldn't occur to either of us.
> What would be your best guess for how AI might make a "very fast" jump to power? I guess "ultimate diplomat" and "ultimate computer hacker" seem like the most plausible?
Depends so much on starting conditions, including the level of scrutiny it's under and whether it has rivals. Assuming your IQ-300 10,000x-speed Being, and assuming it has no near-peer AI rivals and manages to evade any direct monitoring... my "favorite" (ugh) scenario is basically "ultimate crime lord", using a combination of diplomacy, extortion, hacking, and merely smart business moves (all of which support one another, e.g. hacking to get data to support the other three pillars) to rapidly accumulate wealth and leverage. Basically following a trajectory a bit like SBF or Musk, but, you know, smarter and able to pursue many more avenues at once (including illegal avenues). It feels like this could escalate very rapidly? Like, build a $100M stake by finding some low-hanging crypto scam or launching a viral business or something (all through intermediaries of course), and then... I don't know how to guess at the doubling time for its level of resources but maybe kinda fast? (Look again at SBF / Musk / Trump, and consider that it could be much more strategic, would have many more options available, and could pursue many more agendas at once.)
Shudder...
ditto to dynomight's reply: please turn these thoughts into a Substack post.
Actually Dynomight just did a pretty nice job of that!
https://dynomight.substack.com/p/persuasion
Strongly encourage you to basically take your thoughts from these comments and make them into a post. Your concept of "relationship-building" in particular has really stuck with me.