Anders Sandberg on Space Colonization
Anders Sandberg works at the Future of Humanity Institute, a part of the Oxford Martin School and the Oxford University philosophy faculty. Anders’ research at the FHI centres on societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement, estimating the capabilities and underlying science of future technologies, and issues of global catastrophic risk. In particular he has worked on cognitive enhancement, whole brain emulation and risk model uncertainty. He is senior researcher for the FHI-Amlin Research Collaboration on Systemic Risk of Modelling, a unique industry collaboration investigating how insurance modelling contributes to or can mitigate systemic risks.
Anders has a background in computer science and neuroscience. He obtained his Ph.D in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, Sweden, for work on neural network modelling of human memory. He is co-founder and writer for the think tank Eudoxa, and a regular participant in international public debates about emerging technology.
Luke Muehlhauser: In your paper with Stuart Armstrong, “Eternity in Six Hours,” you run through a variety of calculations based on known physics, and show that “Given certain technological assumptions, such as improved automation, the task of constructing Dyson spheres, designing replicating probes, and launching them at distant galaxies, become quite feasible. We extensively analyze the dynamics of such a project, including issues of deceleration and collision with particles in space.”
You frame the issue in terms of the Fermi paradox, but I’d like to ask about your paper from the perspective of “How hard would it be for an AGI-empowered, Earth-based civilization to colonize the stars?”
In section 6.3. you comment on the robustness of the result:
In the estimation of the authors, the assumptions on intergalactic dust and on the energy efficiency of the rockets represent the most vulnerable part of the whole design; small changes to these assumptions result in huge increases in energy and material required (though not to a scale unfeasible on cosmic timelines). If large particle dust density were an order of magnitude larger, reaching outside the local group would become problematic without shielding methods.
What about the density of intragalactic dust? Given your technological assumptions, do you think it would be fairly straightforward to colonize most of the Milky Way from Earth?