AI Could Drive "Industrial Explosion" With Self-Replicating Factories Doubling Every Few Months
The world will soon face an "industrial explosion" where AI-controlled robots enable manufacturing to scale at unprecedented rates, potentially doubling global output every few months and transforming the geopolitical landscape, according to leading Oxford philosophers.
End of Miles reports that while much attention has focused on artificial intelligence itself, the physical manifestation of AI through robotics and automated manufacturing could deliver even more dramatic and visible changes to our world.
Beyond the Intelligence Explosion
In their new paper "Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion," Oxford researchers Fin Moorhouse and Will MacAskill argue that rapid AI advances will enable something even more transformative than digital intelligence alone – an explosion in physical production capabilities.
"The material economy could autonomously make and assemble the parts required for more key parts of the material economy — extracting materials, making parts, assembling robots, building entire new factories and power plants, and producing more chips to train AI to control the robots, too. The result is an industrial base which grows itself, and which can keep growing over many doublings without being bottlenecked by human labour." From "Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion"
The researchers point to rapid advances in robotics that are already happening. Today's general-purpose robots may be as dextrous as "an extremely drunk person," but specialized surgical robots can already peel a quail egg without damaging the membrane inside, while other robot arms can lift the weight of a small car.
The Exponential Factory
According to Moorhouse and MacAskill, the primary limitation to robotic manufacturing has always been human control – precisely the capability that advanced AI will provide. While the first sophisticated general-purpose robots will require human assistance to build, the researchers believe this transition will accelerate rapidly as AI designs the robots and manages human workers constructing them.
"Industrial production could then accelerate to very rapid peak growth rates. Based on current rates of manufacturing factories and robots, output could double every few years or even months. And proof of concept from biological replicators suggest that peak growth rates could be even higher — on the order of days or weeks." From "Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion"
This vision goes beyond simply automating existing factories. The Oxford philosophers describe a future with autonomous industrial systems that extract their own raw materials, design and manufacture their own components, assemble new robots, build entire new factories, and even produce the computer chips needed to train more AI systems to control this expanding base of physical infrastructure.
Resource Overhang Ready to Fuel Growth
The researchers emphasize that humanity currently has access to a massive overhang of unused resources that could fuel this industrial explosion for many doublings. Current human energy production captures just 0.01% of the sunlight reaching Earth, meaning the industrial explosion could continue to grow with access to 100 times more energy by utilizing less than 2% of ocean or desert surfaces for solar collection.
Looking beyond Earth, space-based solar farms could provide over a billion times more energy. Material shortages are equally unlikely to limit growth, as the researchers note we have used "only a tiny fraction of Earth's accessible supply of critical elements" like iron, copper, carbon, aluminum, and silicon.
Shifting the Balance of Power
Perhaps most concerning is the potential for this industrial explosion to create massive power imbalances. Moorhouse and MacAskill warn that authoritarian countries might gain advantage during an industrial explosion by sustaining higher savings rates (reinvesting more output into continued growth) or by ignoring environmental regulations.
"If authoritarian countries are able to grow their industrial base faster (because they can sustain a higher savings rate, reinvesting more of their output into continued growth, or because they are more willing to ignore environmental regulations), then we should expect an industrial explosion to shift power, perhaps decisively, away from democracies." From "Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion"
The implications extend beyond economic considerations. The Oxford philosophers point out that "sheer quantity can yield a quality of its own" – a nuclear war would be far more destructive with arsenals thousands of times larger than today's stockpiles. An industrial explosion could enable such massive scaling of destructive technologies.
Preparing for Transformation
While the researchers acknowledge that the intelligence explosion is their main focus, they emphasize that the subsequent industrial explosion deserves equal attention in preparation efforts. Unlike theoretical digital advances, massive physical manufacturing expansion would visibly and drastically transform the world in ways that may be harder to ignore but no less disruptive.
"Some expect AGI soon, but apparently do not expect it to dramatically transform the world in these ways," the researchers note, arguing that taking the intelligence explosion seriously means we must also prepare for the sweeping physical consequences of self-replicating manufacturing that could follow.
