
Humans with Amplified Intelligence Could Be More Powerful Than AI - jphilip147
http://io9.com/humans-with-amplified-intelligence-could-be-more-powerf-509309984
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coldtea
It's not that great intelligence (be it "humans with amplified intelligence"
or AI) is that powerful.

It's only because we overestimate intelligence we think of that, probably as
part of the "Great Man" fallacy.

Science is not advanced merely by people with "amplified intelligence" \--
it's advanced through thousands of scientists working independently and in co-
operation and tons of hard "manual" work of testing, verification,
experimentation etc.

Not just some sage coming in with his insights, a la Newton and Einstein
(though that did happen with more frequence in the previous centuries when
more "low hanging fruit" discoveries were available).

As for politics, it's usually "sociopaths" and/or good manipulators and liars
that go far ahead, not people with high IQ specifically -- and those traits
are even conflicting sometimes (e.g. people with high IQ but Aspergers).

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andosa
As you're yourself saying, sages with insights did occur relatively frequently
when there were the low hanging fruit in different sciences still available.
But there is no reason to believe that there exists just one level of these
low hanging fruit that just happens to be at around the level that exceptional
human intelligence can grasp. Which means that that this hypothetical
"amplified intelligence" could vrey well have it's own, next level of "low
hanging fruit" that is simply too complex for current human intelligence to
grasp, but is well within the reach of the more powerful intelligence.

~~~
coldtea
> _Which means that that this hypothetical "amplified intelligence" could vrey
> well have it's own, next level of "low hanging fruit" that is simply too
> complex for current human intelligence to grasp, but is well within the
> reach of the more powerful intelligence._

Perhaps, though I doubt it. We imagine intelligence as some kind of infinite
scale, that can extend forever.

I would place my bets on diminishing returns.

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sullyj3
Not to be a dick, but "they also might not". The article doesn't present many
good reasons for believing augmented biological intelligence will be superior.
Or even what that means, ie, for how long? Obviously the human brain is an
existing form of intelligence, so in that sense it may be easier to bootstrap
from. But ultimately, augmentations to the brain would be limited by the
requirement of _being attached to a brain_.

The space of augmented brains is a tiny subset of the space of possible
intelligent systems. There's comparatively unlimited scope for superior
designs to augmented brains within the realm of artificial intelligence, or
"every other nonbiological intelligent system concievable"

It's possible to believe that augmented brains might get a lead in
intelligence for a short period, they are limited by their format, and would
ultimately be overtaken by superior designs.

With regards augmentation prostheses, Kurzweil makes a strong case in his book
"how to Create a Mind", that anything you plug into your brain is bandwidth
limited by how much information the brain can actually process at a time, in a
similar way to how most things in our visual field are immediately discarded
from working memory and we can only really email with the small set of visual
information that we pay attention to.

~~~
randcraw
The article (absurd as it is) not only overlooks all the engineering
constraints in the integration of man and machine, but also focuses only on
bigger and better, completely missing the alternate worlds that may arise. To
modify the brain (and our sensors) will surely change the way we think, our
emotions, and invite a totally different world view. How might that
restructure our social dynamics, especially after the need for competition for
limited resources abates or ends entirely?

Also, the article completely misses the implications of the intermediate
stages of man with machine, or Intelligence Augmentation (the real
interpretation of IA). This is a much more immediate and plausible phase of
the transition, and is already upon us in several ways. I recommend John
Markoff's new book for more on the topic.

There are many demerits to the article, especially given the wealth of more
interesting alternative paths ahead.

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reustle
How do we know it can be more powerful than AI if we don't even know how
powerful AI can be yet?

~~~
jqm
Yep. That's why they still __could__ be. Of course they also couldn't be. The
beauty of unknowns. Opening a vast world of clickbait headlines....

~~~
Zigurd
The article could be re-titled "Maybe a slave AI for your brain will make you
feel better about your brain being as insignificant as an ant's to AIs."
Except for the fact that upbeat titles get more hits.

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harigov
There are various forms of intelligence, most of which have a better chance of
being excelled by AI. If reading inputs and detecting patterns in inputs to
make sense of the world is what brain does, then AI can beat us hands down.
Just the fact that it can hold huge amount of data in "working memory" and
work as long as it takes to find patterns in it, it can find more patterns
(read scientific discoveries) than any human ever aspired to find. If
amplified human intelligence is still decentralized, portable, miniaturized
device connected to our brain to enhance its abilities, there is no way it can
compete with giant supercomputers running AI.

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dghughes
If it does occur I hope there is an equal increase in social skills it's
terifying to read reddit /r/iamverysmart some truly smart people but
psychopath level social skills.

~~~
pliny
Isn't the point of that subreddit to showcase people who are outwardly
insecure about their intelligence, rather than people who are intelligent and
awkward?

~~~
mwhuang2
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's meant as satire.

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akshayB
Well everything still boils down to ethics and morals of the Intelligence.

At the end it all depends on what actions are taken using this intelligence by
super AI or a human with amplified intelligence. Does this intelligence create
a weapons to destroy the planet or helps in finding cure for cancer.

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anentropic
aren't humans already more powerful than AI?

~~~
marcosdumay
Have you ever tried indexing the web?

I guess, nowadays the answer will be more like "no comparison makes sense, we
are good at different tasks".

~~~
shpx
>Have you ever tried indexing the web?

There most likely is some system of visualization that would let a person get
a very good intuition about the web.

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farresito
Comparing to which type of AI? I think a well made AI will be infinitely
smarter than any form of human intelligence.

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Confusion
My bet is on an uploaded mind as the singularity. A human intelligence boosted
by computational resources.

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dominotw
What AI? My neato has trouble getting back to its "base" without bumping into
every wall like drunk sailor.

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octatoan
The author is a neoreactionary. Just thought you might want to know.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
You are confusing George with Michel Anisimov. Also, what you just did,
invoking politics instead of addressing the point should be taboo. I don't
care about people's politics. I don't want to hear about it unless we are
talking politics.

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gwern
No, he's not, because George is _interviewing_ Anissimov:

> Looking to learn more about this, I contacted futurist Michael Anissimov, a
> blogger at Accelerating Future and a co-organizer of the Singularity Summit.
> He’s given this subject considerable thought — and warns that we need to be
> just as wary of IA as we are AI.

Notice the bolding of questions and then responses throughout the bulk of the
article.

(Incidentally, Anissimov was perma-banned from Twitter the other day,
apparently. That takes some doing if you're not gushing about ISIS.)

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
Yeah. I noticed that afterwords. I had only skimmed the first paragraph of the
article when I posted the comment. I'm not a fan of Anissimov, I haven't been
since I saw him speak very naively about whole brain emulation in 2005 and
later when he made some very technically incompetent arguments for some
imagined form of nanotechnological DRM. Even in this case, brain augmentation
strikes me as heroically unpromising. Once we know enough to augment a brain,
I think we will know enough to create superior substitutes - though an obvious
exception to this would be genetic augmentations.

However, his bizarre politics are entirely beside the point. And talking about
politics in technical conversations is a very bad cultural practice.

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meesterdude
Nope. A human being with Amplified Intelligence is not going to be more
powerful than Artificial Intelligence. Nor does the article do much to make a
strong case. The author tries to talk about the psychological impacts of a
radical increase in intelligence, but it's all armchair observations and
guesstimates with little substance to actually digest and ponder.

Interesting topic, not interesting article regarding.

Could Amplified Intelligence happen? Sure. Would it allow us to be smarter?
probably. But we wouldn't be able to outpace AI, because we're still human
beings with finite space and time.

