AI and God-Man
AGI = Artificial General Intelligence
ASI = Artificial Super Intelligence
Learning is the slope of gathering information in a way that can be utilised later (let's call it L). With that being said, the rate of rate of learning is an interesting concept: it's the second derivative of gathering information or how fast can we learn to learn new things (let's call it R). The distribution of L, or what my rate of learning things is, follows a left skewed distribution where our L peaks at childhood/adolescence and starts to deteriorate as we get older. What about R ? I think that's completely upto the individual's effort and willingness to exponentiate their ability to learn things, but most people do not bother to climb down the next derivative .
What if something else did ? What if we build a system that focuses on learning to learn better and faster ? It'll result in exponential growth of everything we know. Knowledge and by extension technology growing at an exponential rate is, in our current state, unfathomable. We'd be left in the dust, scrambling to look ahead while the vehicle zooms past us. That's AGI, on it's way to be ASI. It's not a what if anymore: we are trying to build one, and maybe are getting closer.
A controversial theory for consciousness was written by Julian Jaynes in his Origin of Consciousness, where he suggests that we evolved consciousness only 3000 years ago, which means our ancestors where pretty much unconscious before that time. That claim has deeper implications, and the one I'm focusing on here is: it suggests we humans have evolved our brains, without changing its biological anatomy and it resulted in progress on such a scale. Consciousness was a necessary step in evolution. And of course the most probing question is : can we do it again ? If yes what'll it even look like ?
My initial thoughts were ASI outcompeting and destroying us if we get there, but if ASI was to provide humans with adversities that we've never before seen (for at least 3000 years (?)), is another human evolution possible ? Mark Hamilton argues in his book that such an evolution will happen, and it'll be our last. We will evolve ounce more, to become what he calls a God-Man . This sounds exactly how it is: we become literal gods. I do not know if this theory is even legit, but if I had to guess, our next evolution could be the ability to drastically improve R and to keep doing it throughout our lives (something we expect ASI to do easily) . A human who can do that would be to us what we are to chimpanzees. This same analogy is used to compare an ASI and us. We are the chimpanzees.
So what'll happen ? ASI vs Humans ? That's doomsday for us. ASI vs God Man ? That depends on whether Julian Jaynes theory is even legit, and even if it is, will Mark Hamilton's claim of it happening again is legit and under what conditions.
This may sound very highly speculative and based on unproven theories, but that's the fun part of not knowing the future: trying to imagine it.