I have been persuaded that an AI may be able to perform multiple cognitive tasks at the same time in a way that homo sapiens simply cannot (let’s call this “multithreaded”). I expect that AI will naturally also have larger working memories, longer attention spans, better recall, faster clock cycles, etc.
The above properties (especially multithreaded thought) may constitute a difference that I would consider “qualitatively huge”.
For example:
It could enable massively parallel learning, allowing the AI to attain immense breadth and depth of domain knowledge
The AI could become a domain expert in virtually every domain of relevance (or at least domain of relevance to humans)
This would give it a cross-disciplinary perspective/viewpoint that no human can attain
It could perform multiple cognitive processes at the same time
This may be equivalent to having n minds collaborating on a problem but without any of the problems of collaboration, massively higher communication bandwidth and sharing of full, complex cognitive representations (unlike the lossy transmissions of language)
It may be able to effectively solve problems no human teams can due to their inherent limitations
Multithreaded thought may allow them to represent (, manipulate and navigate) abstractions that single threaded brains cannot (within reasonable compute)
A difference in what abstractions are available to us could constitute a qualitative difference
Larger working memory could allow it to learn abstractions too large to fit in human brains
The above may allow it to derive/synthesise insight that human brains will never find in any reasonable time frame
I think there will be problems that it would take human mathematicians/scientists/philosophers centuries to solve that this AI can probably get done in reasonable time frames. That’s powerful.
But it still doesn’t feel as large as the chimp to human gap. It feels like the AIs can do things much quicker/more efficiently than humans. Solve problems that it would take us longer to solve.
It doesn’t feel like the AI can solve problems that humans will never solve period in the way that humans can solve many problems that chimpanzees will never solve period (assuming static intelligence across chimpanzee generations).
I think the last line above is the main sticker. Human brains are capable of solving problems that chimpanzee society will never solve (unless they evolve to smarter species). I am not actually convinced that this much smarter AI can solve problems that humans will never solve?
I have been persuaded that an AI may be able to perform multiple cognitive tasks at the same time in a way that homo sapiens simply cannot (let’s call this “multithreaded”). I expect that AI will naturally also have larger working memories, longer attention spans, better recall, faster clock cycles, etc.
The above properties (especially multithreaded thought) may constitute a difference that I would consider “qualitatively huge”.
For example:
It could enable massively parallel learning, allowing the AI to attain immense breadth and depth of domain knowledge
The AI could become a domain expert in virtually every domain of relevance (or at least domain of relevance to humans)
This would give it a cross-disciplinary perspective/viewpoint that no human can attain
It could perform multiple cognitive processes at the same time
This may be equivalent to having n minds collaborating on a problem but without any of the problems of collaboration, massively higher communication bandwidth and sharing of full, complex cognitive representations (unlike the lossy transmissions of language)
It may be able to effectively solve problems no human teams can due to their inherent limitations
Multithreaded thought may allow them to represent (, manipulate and navigate) abstractions that single threaded brains cannot (within reasonable compute)
A difference in what abstractions are available to us could constitute a qualitative difference
Larger working memory could allow it to learn abstractions too large to fit in human brains
The above may allow it to derive/synthesise insight that human brains will never find in any reasonable time frame
I think there will be problems that it would take human mathematicians/scientists/philosophers centuries to solve that this AI can probably get done in reasonable time frames. That’s powerful.
But it still doesn’t feel as large as the chimp to human gap. It feels like the AIs can do things much quicker/more efficiently than humans. Solve problems that it would take us longer to solve.
It doesn’t feel like the AI can solve problems that humans will never solve period in the way that humans can solve many problems that chimpanzees will never solve period (assuming static intelligence across chimpanzee generations).
I think the last line above is the main sticker. Human brains are capable of solving problems that chimpanzee society will never solve (unless they evolve to smarter species). I am not actually convinced that this much smarter AI can solve problems that humans will never solve?