Vladimir’s writing style has high information density, but he leaves the work of unpacking to the reader. In this context “that’s what evolution was saying” seems to be a shorthand for something like:
Evolution optimized for goals that did not necessarily imply general intelligence, nor did evolution ever anticipate creating a general intelligence. Nevertheless a general intelligence appeared as the result of evolution’s optimizations. By analogy we should be not be too sure about narrow AI developments not leading to AGI.
Vladimir’s writing style has high information density, but he leaves the work of unpacking to the reader. In this context “that’s what evolution was saying” seems to be a shorthand for something like:
Evolution optimized for goals that did not necessarily imply general intelligence, nor did evolution ever anticipate creating a general intelligence. Nevertheless a general intelligence appeared as the result of evolution’s optimizations. By analogy we should be not be too sure about narrow AI developments not leading to AGI.
Ah. This seems about right, though I think Vladimir’s statement was denser either denser and/or more ambiguous than usual.