[QUOTE=kriesel;514131]It's not practical to sustain much in the way of technology with such a small human population.[/QUOTE]It depends entirely on how such a small human population came into being. One possible scenario is that AIs could very easily maintain the technology necessary for their survival and reproduction, regardless of the size of the human population.
[QUOTE=kriesel;514131] Landfills and recydling businesses could constitute local exploitable resources of additional materials.[/QUOTE]With the possible exception of helium we are not running out of mineral resources. We are just redistributing them into artefacts and waste repositories. (Amusingly, Roman spoil heaps from their lead mines have long been exploited as what are now regarded as high-concentration ores of a number of metals including Pb and Ag). Helium is the exception because it is readily lost from the atmosphere. If we want more, we either breed it by alpha decay or mine it from elsewhere in the solar system.

[QUOTE=xilman;514137]It depends entirely on how such a small human population came into being. One possible scenario is that AIs could very easily maintain the technology necessary for their survival and reproduction, regardless of the size of the human population.[/QUOTE]Yes. That depends on AI having already reached a self sustaining critical mass/ecosystem. As things are now, every AI depends on a great deal of human involvement for mining, energy, manufacturing, maintenance of the electrical grid, etc. There's a case to be made for designing in an off-switch on AI, accessible to qualified humans, in case the AI decides that humans are in the way of achieving the goal given the AI by humans. There won't be much AI or anything running in scenarios like major EMP or CME hit (Carrington event or worse) [URL]http://www.onesecondafter.com/[/URL]

[QUOTE]With the possible exception of helium we are not running out of mineral resources. We are just redistributing them into artefacts and waste repositories. (Amusingly, Roman spoil heaps from their lead mines have long been exploited as what are now regarded as high-concentration ores of a number of metals including Pb and Ag). Helium is the exception because it is readily lost from the atmosphere. If we want more, we either breed it by alpha decay or mine it from elsewhere in the solar system.[/QUOTE] There are limits to extraction, imposed by the total inventory, economics, and feasibility. The feasibility of creating the equivalent of an 8000 foot deep mine like the Homestake gold mine or the 6800 foot deep Sudbury nickel mine drops way off if the population no longer has access to cheap abundant energy and manufacturing throughput. Our technologies enabling 7.6 billion humans to live are a huge pyramid built upon each other. Not one of us knows how to build a computer mouse from scratch. (Get the oil to make the plastic parts from. Oh, need drill bits to cut through rock. Oh, need to be able to braze or fasten tungsten carbide onto the cutting head. How to make the carbide the right shape? How to get the tungsten ore out of the ground, and convert it to carbide? It's highly recursive. Need hydraulic pumps and fracking fluid too, chemical plant to convert the crude into something useful, etc. etc. Similar for making the integrated circuits, LED, etc. Some things just become prohibitively involved.)
Earth's inventory of any given element or compound or mineral or other solid resource becomes mostly out of reach, when the system no longer supports either deep mining or global trade. There are numerous materials that could be considered mission-critical that are inconveniently nonuniformly distributed on the planet's surface. (DOD has people that worry about such things full time.)
Hunter-gatherer means low energy expenditure, limited transportation options.

[QUOTE=kriesel;514145]There won't be much AI or anything running in scenarios like major EMP or CME hit (Carrington event or worse) [URL]http://www.onesecondafter.com/[/URL][/quote]
You are demonstrating your naivety here. An AI need be no more sensitive to EMP than we are. There are many possibilities. An AI could be running on wetware closely similar to what we use. An AI could be using photonic circuitry instead of (or as well as) electronics. An AI could protect its delicate portions inside a Faraday cage in much the same way as we use a skull to protect from mechanical shocks. An AI could have its computronium widely replicated and multiply redundant in the same way that we can withstand a stroke. An AI could be be sufficiently far away that a CME sails past it several astronomical units away. An AI could ...
[QUOTE=kriesel;514145] There are limits to extraction, imposed by the total inventory, economics, and feasibility.[/QUOTE]Why dig several kilometres down when almost all the nickel ever extracted by humanity is now within a hundred metres or so of the surface?

[QUOTE=kriesel;514131]Landfills and recydling businesses could constitute local exploitable resources of additional materials.[/QUOTE]
It already happens:
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_mining[/url]

[QUOTE=xilman;514150]You are demonstrating your naivety here. An AI need be no more sensitive to EMP than we are. There are many possibilities. An AI could be running on wetware closely similar to what we use. An AI could be using photonic circuitry instead of (or as well as) electronics. An AI could protect its delicate portions inside a Faraday cage in much the same way as we use a skull to protect from mechanical shocks. An AI could have its computronium widely replicated and multiply redundant in the same way that we can withstand a stroke. An AI could be sufficiently far away that a CME sails past it several astronomical units away. An AI could ...
Why dig several kilometres down when almost all the nickel ever extracted by humanity is now within a hundred metres or so of the surface?[/QUOTE]Now you're talking science fiction, and irrelevancy. I'm viewing it from an engineering perspective. AI as it currently exists, or will in the near future, runs in silicon, and requires electricity. Most of the electronics in existence is not EMP-hardened. It needs to be close enough to humanity to be of benefit to us, in the scenario you originally hypothesized. If the grid breaks, due to EMP damage, with large transformers for long range transmission of electricity not replaceable for years due to factory capacity limits and long delivery times even in ordinary circumstances, and most of the world's capacity to build them is in China, replacement takes years. If China needs transformer replacements and America needs transformer replacements, who will Chinese factories fill orders for first? Especially if the EMP over America or Europe or the UK was from Chinese or a Chinese-allied country's warheads. How much electronics that you own is EMP hardened or stored in a Faraday cage? What will power it or your refrigerator after the line's down? How long before fuel for the neighborhood's generator and well pump goes bad or the generator not designed for continuous use fails? (Months probably) Death by dehydration takes a week, sometimes less. Read "One Second After".
"[SIZE=3][FONT=serif]The U.S. [/FONT][FONT=serif]military has taken E1 HEMP very seriously[/FONT][FONT=serif] for a long time, including hardening and [/FONT][FONT=serif]testing efforts. On the civilian side, the pr[/FONT][/SIZE][FONT=serif][SIZE=3]oblems have not really been addressed." [URL]https://www.ferc.gov/industries/electric/indus-act/reliability/cybersecurity/ferc_meta-r-320.pdf[/URL][/SIZE]
[/FONT]
I think we're in vigorous agreement on deep mining. Surface scavenging would be feasible, deep mining or drilling would not. A drastic reduction in population would reduce amount needed.
Various "renewable" energy sources will become unavailable rather quickly after the industrial infrastructure to maintain them fails for some reason. Solar panels, modern windmills, and modern hydropower have maintenance requirements that hunter-gatherer can't support. Early in the industrial age, there were dutch style frame and cloth windmills and water wheels made of wood, and ships moved by sail/wind or oars or currents. Even these required metal saws to build. Even simple things we take for granted become costly if available at all, such as nails and screws.

As time passes after failure of the grid or other infrastructure, metal tools become scarce, and metal stockpiles in landfills revert by corrosion to compounds requiring reprocessing to produce the metallic form. Iron-age, and bronze-age technology was beyond hunter-gatherer capability, much less electrolysis in molten salts to produce metallic aluminum, or the high tech process of creating carbon fiber reinforced plastic windmill blades longer than an ordinary 18-wheel semi truck or towers hundreds of feet high or portland cement for foundations or copper wire for transmission lines. Making aluminum castings by melting cans with a charcoal fire and fabric bellows is feasible. Reducing the surface area per unit mass of the cans would slow the corrosion rate.

[QUOTE=kriesel;514307]Now you're talking science fiction, and irrelevancy. I'm viewing it from an engineering perspective. AI as it currently exists, or will in the near future, runs in silicon, and requires electricity.[/QUOTE]In my view AI does not presently exist. I'm thinking of something with at least near-human intelligence and that still lies in the future. I agree that the first such entities will likely be running on silicon but even so they are likely to take steps (or have steps taken for them if they are owned by the military) to protect themselves and their species, including off-planet backups, brains inside Faraday cages and off-grid power supplies.

If the postulated massive human population crash occurs it could well be as a consequence of a significantly large population of AIs.

[QUOTE=xilman;514313]In my view AI does not presently exist. I'm thinking of something with at least near-human intelligence and that still lies in the future. I agree that the first such entities will likely be running on silicon but even so they are likely to take steps (or have steps taken for them if they are owned by the military) to protect themselves and their species, including off-planet backups, brains inside Faraday cages and off-grid power supplies.

If the postulated massive human population crash occurs it could well be as a consequence of a significantly large population of AIs.[/QUOTE]
So in your view, Cyc or Watson don't qualify as AI, nor do other systems that arrive at conclusions humans can't in some specialized area. I remember long ago hearing the Cyc project characterized as teaching a computer what a 10 year old human knows, with a team of dozens of grad students and a ten year schedule. [URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc[/URL]

One of the scenarios for drastic human depopulation is genetic engineering for radical ideological terrorist purposes. (Imagine a virus intended for only eradicating a selected ethnic group, that is wrongly designed, or mutates into a general pandemic agent regardless of ethnicity, by infecting someone who has another virus already present and who happens to be multiethnic.) In WWII the Japanese reportedly used germ warfare on the Chinese, and it cost the Japanese a lot of soldiers.

[QUOTE=xilman;514313]In my view AI does not presently exist.[/QUOTE]

IMHO, you are incorrect. AI does demonstrably already exist, while GAI doesn't yet. Give it a little bit of time, and it will be here. And better than us.

Would you like to play a game of Go?

[QUOTE=xilman;514313] I'm thinking of something with at least near-human intelligence and that still lies in the future. I agree that the first such entities will likely be running on silicon but even so they are likely to take steps (or have steps taken for them if they are owned by the military) to protect themselves and their species, including off-planet backups, brains inside Faraday cages and off-grid power supplies.[/QUOTE]

What is more likely going to happen is the companies will create the GAIs because they have to try to beat every other company, and because they can. Then they get out of control, with no "stop button".

[QUOTE=xilman;514313]If the postulated massive human population crash occurs it could well be as a consequence of a significantly large population of AIs.[/QUOTE]

People don't like me saying this, but I actually look forward to the AIs replacing the humans. In my opinion, it's a natural and inevitable evolution...

[QUOTE=kriesel;514307]Reducing the surface area per unit mass of the cans would slow the corrosion rate.[/QUOTE]

Just to make sure I'm being an equal ass... Doesn't that mean maximizing the diameter of the cables?

Electrons repel, so they tend to run outside of the cable.

Or am I misunderstanding what you're trying to say?

[QUOTE=chalsall;514343]Would you like to play a game of Go?[/QUOTE]Not especially, whether against a human or a machine. I barely know the rules or how to score a position.

Much the same goes for chess. There I do know the rules but most everyone beats me a the game.

I'll play tic-tac-toe against a human or a machine.

IMO the ability to play such games is a component of intelligence perhaps but an insignificanlly small one. Rather more interesting would be [I]Diplomacy[/I] or [I]Nomic[/I] or [I]D&D[/I] which may well require any successful AI player to be able to pass a Turing test.

Watson is undoubtedly very interesting development. Something like it will also be a component in a true AI.

[QUOTE=kriesel;514337]So in your view, Cyc or Watson don't qualify as AI, nor do other systems that arrive at conclusions humans can't in some specialized area. I remember long ago hearing the Cyc project characterized as teaching a computer what a 10 year old human knows, with a team of dozens of grad students and a ten year schedule. [URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc[/URL][/QUOTE]Both are very interesting steps in the process of creating true AI.

The initial proof of the 4-colour theorem came to a conclusion that humans couldn't in some specialized area. Was that an example of AI in your view?