4 Comments

Fabulous article covering the most profound change in known earth intelligences, since the arrival of homo-sapiens, 300,000 years ago. It is all so reminiscent of the internet began when many senior people thought it was just a fad. I remember a meeting with our elected representative to the House of Commons, UK. I had recently returned from working at NASA & I suggested to the MP, that the libraries at least needed internet connections. He didn’t really see that they did & thought one terminal would be enough! I see exactly similar thinking in many elected people now & in the UK most of the people who will be directly concerned: Medics, Teachers, Civil Servants etc are like ostrich, assuming that AI is all a fad & means nothing.

I have no idea where all of this leads. We are in a regime that few if any science fiction writers imagined, but there is certainly the prospect of both universal benefits to all or universal misery if it all goes wrong & we end up with an AI dictator worse than any of the monsters from human history.

It is only with the help, writings, video from people like you that we can hope to enter broad sunlit uplands of extraordinary opportunities.

Thank you for all that you do!

Expand full comment

"Because of this exponential growth, the 21st century will be equivalent to 20,000 years of progress at today’s rate of progress -- which is interesting to think about."

Interesting yes! Can humans cope with all that progress? We are supposed to be the beneficiaries. Look around and you have to question whether the average human will be able to learn enough to take part. Soon we may have make to human internal augmentation part of our human external technology.

Expand full comment

Wow! The speed up is amazing, but also frightening. I enjoyed the video. Hadn't seen it yet.

Expand full comment

Hopefully, AI, by banding the entire world with hubs of human knowledge 'at its finger tips,' so to speak, doesn't find a way to crush our own imaginations and thereby our very souls, in order that we may survive; exist and plan for a human future and endeavors. !

Expand full comment