Will human minds still be special in an age of AI?

We tend to think of intelligence like height – and imagine ourselves being overtaken. That misses the point Until recently, we humans have been able to be smug about our abilities. No other animals play boardgames, write essays or prove mathematical theorems. So, in an age of AI, are human minds still special, or merely also-rans? Talking about superhuman AI assumes that intelligence is a single scale.

Continue reading... We tend to think of intelligence like height – and imagine ourselves being overtaken. No other animals play boardgames, write essays or prove mathematical theorems. So, in an age of AI, are human minds still special, or merely also-rans? Talking about superhuman AI assumes that intelligence is a single scale.

But intelligence isn’t like height. Humans are no different. Human intelligence is a response to our limitations . Yes, AlphaGo can beat the best human go players, but it was trained on many human lifetimes of games. Because humans and machines face different constraints, we should expect them to find different solutions to the problems they face.

Because the artificial neural networks used to build AI systems tend to blur things together. Human intelligence draws on a breadth of experience that goes beyond the data used to train AI systems. Our finite lives, finite brains and limited capacity to communicate have shaped the nature of human intelligence. We can thus expect that human minds will continue to be a little bit special, even as we continue to develop smarter machines. AI and human minds will simply be different from one another.

No other animals play boardgames, write essays or prove mathematical theorems. So, in an age of AI, are human minds still special, or merely also-rans? Talking about superhuman AI assumes that intelligence is a single scale. Continue reading... Will human minds still be special in an age of AI?