If you could grow your own brain as large as you wanted, and live as long as you wanted with the physical robustness and energy of a 25-year-old, that alone seems like a road to godhood, though perhaps a slow one. If you could download knowledge directly, as another commenter suggests, that becomes a much faster road.
> Apotheosis in the context of AI safety as well as for humankind is really about the accumulation of power, rather than the accumulation of knowledge. The extent of our apotheosis is limited only by what we can control, not by what we know.
If one country, even a smallish one, has 50-100 additional years of technological advancement, I think they might be able to use this knowledge to gain a lot more power. I'm pretty sure history has borne this out. Do you think we're at the limit of what new technology can do for military strength? Materials science (armor, weapons), biotechnology, energy and battery technology, cybersecurity, psychology and propaganda, lasers and anti-missile defense systems...
Suppose a country like North Korea had 100 Einsteins working on such things for a few years under the radar. I suppose it might be difficult for them to hide the construction of their army of thousands of robots invincible to all but the most powerful bombs... but then again, maybe they could do it underground, directly underneath some large innocuous manufacturing operation. And, of course, the cyber- and bio-weapons efforts would be very easy to conceal.