Indeed. I think about this type of thing often when I consider the concept of superhuman AI—when I spend hours stuck on a problem with a simple solution or forget something important, it’s not hard to imagine an algorithm much smarter than me that just doesn’t make those mistakes. I think the bar really isn’t that high for improving substantially on human cognition. Our brains have to operate under very strict energy constraints, but I can easily imagine a machine which performs a lot better than me by applying more costly but effective algorithms and using more precise memory. A pocket calculator is the trivial case, but I expect most of the other algorithms my brain uses can also be improved a lot given a larger energy and compute budget.
Indeed. I think about this type of thing often when I consider the concept of superhuman AI—when I spend hours stuck on a problem with a simple solution or forget something important, it’s not hard to imagine an algorithm much smarter than me that just doesn’t make those mistakes. I think the bar really isn’t that high for improving substantially on human cognition. Our brains have to operate under very strict energy constraints, but I can easily imagine a machine which performs a lot better than me by applying more costly but effective algorithms and using more precise memory. A pocket calculator is the trivial case, but I expect most of the other algorithms my brain uses can also be improved a lot given a larger energy and compute budget.