Resolves as YES if at last 100k people turn blue within the space of 100 days, while still being alive and otherwise healthy at the time when they become blue, before January 1st 2035.
This must have occurred either through a mechanism that did not exist before 2025, or through a mechanism that did exist but was very rare.
People painting themselves blue does not count. For this to resolve as YES, people's skin color must have a blue/bluish color that's visually remarkable. This change must occur over the surface area of at least 15% of their skin.
The people who turn blue must be alive and healthy for at least 24 hours after turning blue for this to resolve as YES. If the mechanism turning people blue also causes significant health issues later on, then this question still resolves YES provided that at the time people turn blue, the associated health symptoms are still limited.
Things that are excluded:
Respiratory issues (e.g., asthma attack, pneumonia, choking, COPD)
Cardiac issues (e.g., heart failure, congenital heart defects)
Exposure to extreme cold (causing poor circulation)
Poisoning (carbon monoxide, certain medications)
Methemoglobinemia (a condition where blood cannot carry oxygen effectively)
Tattoos
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@Forrest I would venture yes, provided they remained otherwise healthy for at least 24 hours after becoming a visibly blue color, and for "the relevant number of people turning blue" to occur over a period of less than 100 days.
@Forrest But in the case where it doesn't cause significant health issues, and all the other criteria of the question are fulfilled, then it would be considered valid in the context of this question. Given that it's a rare condition prior to 2025.
@Forrest Like if there's an event in 2031 where significant amounts of silver dust get into the water supply in india or somewhere, and hundreds of thousands of people turn blue over the following 100 days by getting argyria, then this would resolve this question as YES, provided all the other criteria hold true.
Seems oddly specific. How did you come up with that? Do you have something in mind that would cause people to turn blue, or would enable them to turn themselves blue (for whatever reasons)?
Carl Shulman 00:36:09
One thing maybe I should talk about is that an AI could also release bioweapons that are likely to kill people soon but not yet while also having developed the countermeasures to those. So those who surrender to the AI will live while everyone else will die and that will be visibly happening and that is a plausible way in which a large number of humans could wind up surrendering themselves or their states to the AI authority.
Dwarkesh Patel 00:36:51
Another thing is it develops some biological agent that turns everybody blue. You're like, okay you know I can do this.
Carl Shulman 00:37:02
Yeah, that's a way in which it could exert power selectively in a way that advantaged surrender to it relative to resistance. That's a threat but there are other sources of leverage too. There are positive inducements that AI can offer. We talked about the competitive situation. If the great powers distrust one another and are in a foolish prisoner's dilemma increasing the risk that both of them are laid waste or overthrown by AI, if there's that amount of distrust such that we fail to take adequate precautions on caution with AI alignment, then it's also plausible that the lagging powers that are not at the frontier of AI may be willing to trade quite a lot for access to the most recent and most extreme AI capabilities. An AI that has escaped and has control of its servers can also exfiltrate its weights and offer its services. You can imagine AI that could cut deals with other countries. Say that the US and its allies are in the lead, the AIs could communicate with the leaders of countries that are on the outs with the world system like North Korea, or include the other great powers like the People's Republic of China or the Russian Federation, and say “If you provide us with physical infrastructure, a worker that we can use to construct robots or server farms which we (the misbehaving AIs) have control over. We will provide you with various technological goodies, power for you to catch up.”