> Seems a bad deal to me, to frustrate, slow down, or even forego the 2050-s Intelligence Revolution that may multiply total human wealth by a factor of 10 to 20 in value...
Why do you assume the emergence of a super intelligence would result in human wealth increasing instead of decreasing? Looking at how humans with superior technology used it to exploit fellow humans throughout history should give you pause. Humans don't care about the aggregate "dog wealth" - let alone that of ants.
I'm assuming the Intelligence Revolution, multiplying Human Intelligence with machines, will have the same effect as the Industrial Revolution had, on multiplying human physical strength. That multiplied the GDP by a factor of ~20 times, hockey stick like, in a fairy short time, a century or two.
The industrial revolution was powered by natural resources that it helped unlock. What value reserve will ai tap into to create hockey stick growth?
It will recombine the existing resources in new ways. Neanderthals had access to exactly the same natural resources as we have now. Obviously we do much more with what we both got, then they ever did. Obviously it's not only the availability of some atoms or molecules, but what one does with them, how one recombines them in novel ways. For that one needs knowledge and energy. And the later mostly turns out can be derived from the the former too.
Obviously it's what we do with them, the biotech manufacturing and nuclear power production revolution happened pre AI. The reason it hasn't replaced petroleum is economic and social.