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Steve Wozniak Now Afraid of AI Too, Just Like Elon Musk
quax writes Steve Wozniak maintained for a long time that true AI is relegated to the realm of science fiction. But recent advances in quantum computing have him reconsidering his stance. Just like Elon Musk, he is now worried about what this development will mean for humanity. Will this kind of fear actually engender the dangers that these titans of industry fear? Will Steve Wozniak draw the same conclusion and invest in quantum comuting to keep an eye on the development? One of the bloggers in the field thinks that would be a logical step to take. If you can't beat'em, and the quantum AI is coming, you should at least try to steer the outcome. Woz actually seems more ambivalent than afraid, though: in the interview linked, he says "I hope [AI-enabling quantum computing] does come, and we should pursue it because it is about scientific exploring." "But in the end we just may have created the species that is above us."
So many accountants that have lost their jobs to automation. We've nearly obliterated the profession with all these amazing technological innovations. I mean, when was the last time you even saw an accountant with a job? There used to be huge buildings full of accountants with their funny calculators and running around with ledgers. Now one person with Quickbooks and Excel can do more than what an entire building could do, and it's destroying the economy, wrecking civilization, and bringing about the final demise of mankind.
All the doom-n-gloomers miss what's really going on. AI isn't taking over - we're redesigning ourselves. Once viable non-biological emulation of our existing mind becomes possible, people will choose to migrate themselves onto that. Humans will upgrade. The end of biology will be a matter of consumer preference.
I was just having this discussion with a friend of mine who is a professor in this area. We were discussing the foundations of intelligence and this was her response:
" From my perspective, the best place to look for the basis of human intelligence would be the comparison of other animals’ brains to humans’ — because we are obviously the most intelligent animal, or at least the most agentic with our civilization-across-all-climates thing. Number of neurons alone cannot be the biological substrate of intelligence, because animals like whales have more neurons than we do*. It seems like the “scale” of the brain matters very much, too. Primates (e.g., humans) rule the intelligence hierarchy, and all primates have much more compact brains than other mammals; our neurons can communicate much faster, because they are closer together and properly insulated. However, among primates, humans have the same scale of neurons as other primates but we also have the most neurons out of all the primates (i.e., our brain efficiency is the same as chimps, but our brain is larger in size). So, it’s clearly a little bit of both: having a lot of neurons is good, but the efficiency of those neurons is of fundamental importance.
Human brains still have a few interesting differences from other primate brains, which I think further hint at the basis of intelligence: humans continue to generate new neurons (“neurogenesis”) throughout our lives, whereas primates have very little if any neurogenesis after birth! That’s got to count for something. Also, it seems that connections between the neurons in human brains change more rapidly in some areas of the cortex than other areas, whereas we are pretty positive that changes between neuronal connections occur at an equal rate throughout all areas of primates’ brains. This means that different areas of human brains can mature at different rates, which is probably rather helpful for us. Conversely, primates’ brains mature constantly across all regions, no matter what their function and when in development it is needed."
Assuming she is correct, quantum computing would greatly increase the amount of connections & speed between computer 'neurons', assuming we are talking about an AI programmed with a neural network.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
It's only a matter of when. Even if all strictly computational AI research stops tomorrow, we'll be able to genetically enhance human intelligence by and by, even if it takes several thousand genetic manipulations to do it.
When direct neural I/O becomes a thing, millions (or billions) of people will be directly, electronically linked via the internet. Tell me that's not a new form of intelligence.
For that matter, we'll almost certainly develop at least one form of AI the way nature did. We'll cobble up some genetic algorithms primed to develop the silicon equivalent of neurons, give them some problems to solve, and perhaps a robot or two to control, and we eventually "grow" an AI that way.
But look, it's not the end of us, or anything else. We merge with the things. Our thoughts become linked with theirs. If we can transfer all memory, then eventually we *become* the AI, perhaps with a few spare physical copies of ourselves kept for amusement purposes.
Will AIs fight? There will be conflicts, of course. There always are. Resource conflicts, however, will be minimal. An AI doesn't need much, and can figure out how to get enough more efficiently than we can. Conflicts will be over other matters and are unlikely to be fatal.
Wozniak, et. al. need to chill. It's just evolution.
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There are a few things in there that made me raise an eyebrow. Humans don't really experience much neurogenesis. There are some areas where new neurons can form, under certain conditions, but they tend to be special purpose ones, and the older structures in the brain as well. The thing that really differentiates us from other animals is our overdeveloped cortex, particularly the frontal lobes, but the neurogenesis that's been found is mostly in the deep gray matter and is more associated with things like motor coordination and reward processing. One interesting exception is the hippocampus which is known to be important in memory formation. Indirect hints of neurogenesis in the cortex have been reported, but other methods that should turn them up haven't, so the evidence is contradictory. I'm also not aware of neurogenesis being particularly pronounced in humans. It occurs in other primates, and in other vertebrates.
There does seem to be a connection between intelligence and the brain to body size ratio. Bigger bodies require more neurons to carry and process sensory and motor information, and these neurons are probably not involved in intelligence.
What we call intelligence seems to me to be likely an emergent property of a bunch of neurons that don't have any pressing sensory or motor tasks keeping them busy. Various factors affecting communication efficiency and interconnection among neurons are probably important, but these can be disrupted quite a bit in human disease and the sufferers don't lose their human intelligence (although their cognitive abilities do decline). I don't think there's a magic humans-have-it-and-nobody-else-does bullet. Human intelligence is just what lots of animals have with lots of extra capacity, possibly redirection from other things (like senses) to boost that capacity, and maybe a few tweaks for optimizing neurons that talk to themselves over ones that communicate with the body.