10Thus, as Bostrom (2014, Chapter 3) discusses, where neurons can ﬁre a maximum of hundreds of Hz, the
clock speed of modern computers can reach some 2 Ghz: ~ten million times faster. Where action potentials
travel at some hundreds of m/s, optical communication can take place at 300,000,000 m/s: ~a million times
faster. Where brain size and neuron count are limited by cranial volume, metabolic constraints, and other
factors, supercomputers can be the size of warehouses. And artiﬁcial systems need not suffer, either, from the
brain’s constraints with respect to memory and component reliability, input/output bandwidth, tiring after hours,
degrading after decades, storing its own repair mechanisms and blueprints inside itself, and so forth. Artiﬁcial
systems can also be edited and duplicated much more easily than brains, and information can be more easily
transferred between them.

11See e.g. Bostrom (2015), Russell (2019, Chapter 5) on the “Gorilla Problem,” Ord (2020), and Ngo (2020)
Is Power-Seeking AI an Existential Risk?