Why Will Simulation Build Superintelligence Faster?

Sonya Huang asked where the ceiling on simulation sits and when an agent should enter the real world. Sonya Huang said Rich Sutton is very dismissive of simulation. One panelist says the right question is whether a superintelligence can be built in simulation. If a superintelligence can be built in simulation, one panelist believes it will happen 10 times or a hundred times faster, because simulation can be infinitely parallelized.

MetNet is the example. A weather forecasting model from the Google Brain Amsterdam office, built together with Google Research, used machine learning to predict short-term weather forecasts. MetNet was way better than the physics-based simulations. The physics simulations accumulated errors over time, so physics simulation is not perfect. Relatively simple environments can still show emerging behavior, including technology, without exact physics.

A ceiling sits somewhere near quantum physics, yet very interesting things can be done without real physics. The speed comes from parallelization: simulation can be infinitely parallelized, so a superintelligence built in simulation will happen 10 times or a hundred times faster.