Ben Goertzel argues the selfish-supermind attractor has a wider basin than BGI
bengoertzel · x · 2026-10-24
AGI pioneer Ben Goertzel published a new blog post, The Harsh Geometry of Superintelligence, extending his series on types of superintelligent minds.
- Earlier posts covered mind archetypes — Omohundro's 2008 power-seeking maximizer, the BGI (beneficial general intelligence) minds his team is building, and others — each with basic drives that persist as capability grows.
- The new question: what are the shapes of the attractor basins? Which type of mind will a scaling system actually fall into as intelligence increases?
- His conclusion: the "selfish supermind" attractor generally has a wider basin than the BGI attractor — a geometric metaphor for why alignment is hard.
More from AGI Musings
- Peter Diamandis: AI's goal should be doing more good than harm, not zero bad outcomes — PeterDiamandis · 2026-10-24
- Zvi asks: what are the biggest success stories of rationalism? — panickssery · 2026-10-24
- Reddit take: AI isn't a threat but the next stage of evolution after humanity — nikiwonoto · 2026-10-24
- Frontier models are commoditizing fast — AI safety FUD may be OpenAI/Anthropic's moat — AlexTensor · 2026-10-24
- Salesforce to Require Registration of External AI Agents, Charge per Data Access — verrsane · 2026-10-24
- Thread argues Hinton's AI doom narrative recycles cold-war nuclear catastrophe tropes — AlexTensor · 2026-10-24