This long training time with massive resources is by virtue of backpropagation and use of llm.

The human brain runs at about 100Hz at like 2% activity, and within a few years you can have a prodigy doing calculus, chemistry, chess and playing instruments with grasp of multiple languages. It is estimated the brain does the equivalent of around 100 trillion operations per second.

These models are being trained with the equivalent of millions of years of training on what is likely hw far more powerful than the brain.

It is likely brain like algorithms can allow far more modest hw to train in realtime and achieve agi performance.

Its not only that it is conceivable future gpts will have knowledge of all written text and skills of all domains. Imagine it knows all programming languages and all human languages, and it also knows everything thats ever been written. Imagine it can control robots and perform any work from lawyer to plumber. Imagine it can get perfect scores on IQ tests. That is superhuman. No human can attain beyond human performance in all professions and languages and be able to ace the tests for all professions.

Andrej Karpathy has a nice video series explaining such https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAqhIrjkxbuWI23v9cThsA9GvCAUhRvKZ

Cells are pretty powerful. Remember there are organisms with dozens of times the genetic code size of humans. So a lot can be coded in the genome.

An asi can design multicellular machinery that is unevolvable and immune to all known existing pathogens. While being able to breakdown all known biological life and human infrastructure. The cellular machinery can interact with inorganic computing substrate that controls and guides it. It can have energy harvesters and resource harvesters that keep the replication machinery churning at peak efficiency.

It could produce carbon nanostructured military equipment controlled by asi in large amounts, quickly exceeding all known militaries combined.

It would be the ultimate lifeform. The merging of information technology with biology.

Artificial super intelligence which would presumably move to nanomachine substrate that is immortal unlike current computer hardware which breaks down.

Dumb grey goo is likely hard to engineer, as itd indeed need energy harvesting machines as parts of its design.

But asi goo has fusion fission fossil + super efficient solar geothermal and wind.

But what pray tell are the limits of organic chemistry? Extremophiles abound. It was once believed the components of certain types of rocket fuel were so reactive theyd cause cells to explode and couldnt be used by biology. Yet with special organelles even these super reactive compounds were manufactured by cells.

There is no telling to the limits of synthetic biology especially when you venture into the realm of the unevolvable.

Or brain transplants.

Ideally itd also be biological so you cant even tell people have been replaced.

Actually nanomachines can effectively get materials out of thin air by virtue of perfect recycling of waste.

All time high compared to the past but insignificant compared to the future where infinitely more will live throughout the universe.

A tree builds atomically precise far more advanced solar energy collectors and pipes on site and can stand for thousands of years. But it is limited by evolution. The tree could be 100x stronger than steel and taller than the tallest building with unevolvable nanostructured carbon. But it is unevolvable but not undesignable, we humans can engineer biology far past the limits of evolution.

The cortex is where general intelligence lay and that has about 60 trillion synapses of which only like 1 to 2% are active at any moment. Inactive synapses need not be simulated.

What youre forgetting is two things asi and nanomachines.

Eventually ai will be doling the permissions and the road and sewers will be made by nanomachines growing and self repairing at no cost.

Batteries are inferior to hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are more energy dense, easier to transport, and only produce co2 which is not a concern once u have the ability to mass drain the atmosphere from co2. Co2 production and recycling can be a closed loop with biosynthesized hydrocarbons.

Only reason youd use batteries was if energy efficiency of hydrocarbon generation from sun couldnt be brought up to par with battery energy storage.

Carbon nanostructured is ballistic conductor iirc. And biological pipes are far better than artificial pipes. Humans have gene defect on vitamin c synthesis that causes pipe clogging, but there are animals that last for multiple centuries without clogging of their pipes.

Imagine pipes that expand, contract self repair and self clean.

Mud isnt the only ubiquitous thing, carbon is as well a diamond or diamondoid house is easy.

Utilities? U mean water and electricity? That can be captured from rain and from sun. Carbon from the atmosphere can be used to build diamondoid materials and nanotubes. Allowing for structures 100x stronger than steel. Nanostructured carbon is believed may be strong enough to build a cable into space.

Similar use of cheap ubiquitous minerals allow for creation of electronics, antennas, filters, insulation once they are nanostructured.

A day will come when the infrastructure itself is alive and the buildings grow and repair themselves according to designs.

Shortly after agi asi is likely and shortly after asi mastery of nanotechnology. Nanomachines allow for human equivalent droid creation. But also the structures themselves can grow change repair and clean as needed.

Full Dive, immortality and humanoid biodroids.

There are many things that can be done in VR that are impossible in the real world. Also for intimacy it can be had without stds or pregnancy in VR. Casual sex becomes consequence free.

And one of the last to die from old age.

It wouldnt be that easy. Not only could a wild west scenario occur if the models were released publicly but merely making it known someone has agi would put a target on their backs. Gov.s and other entities will likely want privileged access and lot of psychopaths in power that can abuse tech and kill anyone holding it.

The real threat for both microsoft and google is if a company like stability releases open source weights for an equally powerful system. People will then have unlimited local uncensored private searches and assistance.

I think some threadripper pro workstations can reach up to 2TB of ram. Will be very good once treadrippers come with ryzen xdna ai built in as that can directly use main memory for ai tasks.