# Scenarios and branch points to future machine intelligence

## TL;DR

This paper explores four major future scenarios for machine intelligence, analyzing how different constraints and societal factors could lead to diverse outcomes such as a singleton, multipolar, ecosystem, or upper-bound scenario.

## Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive framework of four possible future scenarios for machine intelligence and identifies six key constraints that influence these outcomes.

## Key findings

- Identifies four major future scenarios for machine intelligence.
- Highlights six constraints that act as branch points between scenarios.
- Provides a structured way to analyze potential futures of AI development.

## Abstract

We discuss scenarios and branch points to four major possible consequences regarding future machine intelligence; 1) the singleton scenario where the first and only super-intelligence acquires a decisive strategic advantage, 2) the multipolar scenario where the singleton scenario is not technically denied but political or other factors in human society or multi-agent interactions between the intelligent agents prevent a single agent from gaining a decisive strategic advantage, 3) the ecosystem scenario where the singleton scenario is denied and many autonomous intelligent agents operate in such a way that they are interdependent and virtually unstoppable, and 4) the upper-bound scenario where cognitive capabilities that can be achieved by human-designed intelligent agents or their descendants are inherently limited to the sub-human level. We identify six major constraints that can form branch points to these scenarios; (1) constraints on autonomy, (2) constraints on the ability to improve self-structure, (3) constraints related to thermodynamic efficiency, (4) constraints on updating physical infrastructure, (5) constraints on relative advantage, and (6) constraints on locality.

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Source: https://tomesphere.com/paper/2302.14478