Civilization has had many centuries to adapt to the specific strengths and weaknesses that people have. Our institutions are tuned to take advantage of those strengths, and to cover for those weaknesses. The fact that we exist in a technologically advanced society says that there is some way to make humans fit together to form societies that accumulate knowledge, tooling, and expertise over time.
The borderline-general AI models we have now do not have exactly the same patterns of strength and weakness as humans. One question that is frequently asked is approximately
When will AI capabilities reach or exceed all human capabilities that are load bearing in human society?
A related line of questions, though, is
When will AI capabilities reach a threshold where a number of agents can form a larger group that accumulates knowledge, tooling, and expertise over time?
Will their roles in such a group look similar to the roles that people have in human civilization?
Will the individual agents (if “agent” is even the right model to use) within that group have more control over the trajectory of the group as a whole than individual people have over the trajectory of human civilization?
In particular the third question seems pretty important.
Civilization has had many centuries to adapt to the specific strengths and weaknesses that people have. Our institutions are tuned to take advantage of those strengths, and to cover for those weaknesses. The fact that we exist in a technologically advanced society says that there is some way to make humans fit together to form societies that accumulate knowledge, tooling, and expertise over time.
The borderline-general AI models we have now do not have exactly the same patterns of strength and weakness as humans. One question that is frequently asked is approximately
A related line of questions, though, is
When will AI capabilities reach a threshold where a number of agents can form a larger group that accumulates knowledge, tooling, and expertise over time?
Will their roles in such a group look similar to the roles that people have in human civilization?
Will the individual agents (if “agent” is even the right model to use) within that group have more control over the trajectory of the group as a whole than individual people have over the trajectory of human civilization?
In particular the third question seems pretty important.