Michael Nielsen: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Maybe it needs opaqueness as well. It’s this optimal mix of surveillance and opaqueness, that you actually have some latitude to break certain laws, to misbehave, that keeps the system stable, limits the abuses of power, limits how much power the powerful have over us. There has to be some Madisonian point of view where you’re bringing the powerful institutions into conflict with each other. We do that very imperfectly at the moment. Ideas like search warrants and things like this — they’re supposed to be checks and balances, but it seems like the organizations which do the surveillance are too powerful. They don’t have strong enough checks on them. I don’t know whether, just as a practical matter, the United States is capable of doing this well. I’d be much more comfortable if it was in other countries. In a strong AI future, where do the economies of scale lie? Say, within your lifetime, not 500 years from now. There’ll be one company, there’ll be one chip maker.…

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