8.5 Intelligence growth

Enjoy dominance of Human Intelligence, while it lasts

Human Intelligence and AI currently operate in different scopes of Capability domains, with AI presently operating within a few subsets of total Human Intelligence Capabilities. Right now, AI is much more constrained than Human Intelligence, primarily because:

• • • AI generally has access to massively lower information processing Capability than each individual Human Brain which is limited by total available Computer information processing power. 

    • AI has much less access to a diverse range of realtime sensory information.

    • AI has very limited ability to control outputs and initiate actions in the real world.  

Nevertheless, the growth rates of Human Intelligence and AI currently have vastly different trajectories of development. Human Intelligence development is flat, and AI’s development is increasing exponentially.

Fixed versus Variable Hard Limits

Human Intelligence is largely determined by genetic and environmental factors, and while it can improve over time through education, training, and experience, the rate of improvement is generally very slow and develops in small incremental steps over hundreds of years. Human Intelligence has evolved significantly over the course of history, however it is unlikely that there will be any sudden and dramatic increases in Human Brain function in the near future that would lead to an overall large step change increase in the level of Human Intelligence.

On the other hand, AI is an emerging field that is still in the early stages of development, and it is improving rapidly as new algorithms, Computer information processing hardware, and exponentially more data becomes available globally. There are currently very large investments in AI research and development, and many experts believe that AI may surpass Human Intelligence in a large number of domains in the coming decades, years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds...

To pause or not to pause, that is the question

It is very important to note that AI is still highly reliant on Humans for its development and programming, and there are many technical, ethical, and regulatory challenges that must be addressed before it can achieve its full and alarming potential as the dominant species on Earth. Additionally, the potential for AI to improve and surpass Human Intelligence in certain domains does not necessarily mean that it will become a fully autonomous, self-directed entity that is Capable of operating independently of Human control. 

Well, that’s what we Humans will prefer to tell ourselves, so that we can sleep at night.