Gates and Jobs are pop-stars of technology. A few hundred years into the future, we're more likely to see Charles Babbage and Alan Turing in text books than Gates and Jobs. Those text books are unlikely to be read by humans in the same physical form we exist today (unless something catastrophic happens), and the class of intelligent beings dominating that period will trace their lineage directly to inventors and scientists than businessmen.
It's often the people who popularize ideas that are remembered for them (however unjustly), so I wouldn't care to predict who will turn out to be important to folks hundreds of years hence. If it's like today, there'll probably be popular figureheads and a bunch of academics trying to belittle them in favor of a pet forerunner, just as we can argue about whether, say, Alan Kay or Douglas Englebart should be the person people bring up to claim Apple didn't invent the GUI, or Smalltalk or Simula should be worshipped (or ridiculed) as the first OO language.
How does it matter whether it's humans or uploaded humans or pure AIs that we're talking about. You think that AIs will necessarily be driven by pure logic and all agree on the fundamental root of any given idea?
I love how computer scientists seem to decide they've "solved" AI because neural nets can sorta- kinda- do something that we do unconsciously (like see) and blithely assume that we just need a bigger net to get "thinking". When have we ever built something more complex than, say, a bunch of rocks piled on each other, without understanding its basic workings?
What are you going on about? You seem to have a hot button about strong AI being impossible, but no one here was talking about AI. The OP was talking about future changes to biological humans.
> I love how computer scientists seem to decide they've "solved" AI because neural nets can sorta- kinda- do something
Citation needed. It turns out there are exactly zero computer scientists who have ever said anything even remotely like that.
> Those text books are unlikely to be read by humans in the same physical form we exist today (unless something catastrophic happens), and the class of intelligent beings dominating that period will trace their lineage directly to inventors and scientists than businessmen.
Sounds like assumed strong AI to me.
> Citation needed. It turns out there are exactly zero computer scientists who have ever said anything even remotely like that.
Why cite, you've apparently done the lit search.
From memory there's:
"Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended."
That was in 1993 -- so we've got almost ten years left. Phew.
Now he's a math professor, although his profession is currently "computer scientist" but I expect it to be very easy to find many other computer scientists who've said similar things, even going back to before neural nets. They may not be computer scientists you (or I) respect but...
I think some computer scientists spoke with similar confidence about LISP, but can't be bothered to find citations. (Obviously hard, since there aren't any, right?)
For really off-topic assumptions of this kind that push my button -- slower-than-light travel to other stars is often discussed as though it's a solved problem (e.g. Fermi's Paradox) despite the fact that it would require a really complex machine that was able to work flawlessly for hundreds or thousands of years. Again, something we're ludicrously far away from.
That's not a very good example. He did not claim anybody had solved AI, he predicted that somebody would, based on trends at the time. You can't fault people for being optimistic about the future.
I've seen this agrument before, and I doubt it. It hasn't happened in any other industry, why would computing be different? Say computer chips, people think Moore, not Pfann. Say airplane, people think Wright, not Bernoulli. Say car, people think Ford, not Otto. In the future, saying computers will almost definitely make people think Gates, not Babbage.
Gates and Jobs are pop-stars of technology. A few hundred years into the future, we're more likely to see Charles Babbage and Alan Turing in text books than Gates and Jobs. Those text books are unlikely to be read by humans in the same physical form we exist today (unless something catastrophic happens), and the class of intelligent beings dominating that period will trace their lineage directly to inventors and scientists than businessmen.