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What frightens me is the scenario of human thought being overwhelmed and left in the dust. Not being aided or abetted by computers, but being completely overwhe

What frightens me is the scenario of human thought being overwhelmed and left in the dust. Not being aided or abetted by computers, but being completely overwhelmed, and we are to computers as cockroaches or fleas are to us. That would be scary. This implies to me that his definition of intelligence is really centered on what we as humans do. And that is interesting, but less interesting than a more general notion of intelligence.

sorokod 9y ago
Not necessarily. It just means that ML based approach may be better than whatever it is we humans do in enough tasks to make the humans irrelevant. Think calligraphy Vs. the printing press.
- astrodust 9y ago
  I'm sure some people thought the printing press was the devil incarnate as it took the human element out of books. Prior to that every letter, every page, was produced with some measure of human effort. Holding that work, reading those letters, was something special. Now there's no direct physical connection between what we write and the book someone holds, yet we don't run around screaming that automated printing has destroyed writing. With intelligence this is likely to be the same thing: AI can amplify regular intelligence just as the printing press can amplify the ability of one writer to reach more people.
  - pixl97 9y ago
    >yet we don't run around screaming that automated printing has destroyed writing. I disagree in part. There have been many complaints voiced about bots in modern digital book distribution producing tons of crap and flooding markets like amazon.com with junk. It doesn't take very many processes like this to produce a corpus of information larger than has been created by mankind. So in some sense of the word, bots have 'destroyed' writing by volume. Now that said, most of it will never be seen in a place where it causes interruption to shoppers or readers, as it will get filtered out by the distributors. That said, this makes a mess of unfiltered distributed systems of digital books.
    - astrodust 9y ago
      Where bots can flood the market with junk, bots can flag and remove junk books, or at least push them down in terms of visibility. The problem is Amazon doesn't seem the least bit motivated to even try here.
- runeks 9y ago
  > It just means that ML based approach may be better than whatever it is we humans do in enough tasks to make the humans irrelevant. Given that more and more people are employed in ML-related jobs, what makes you think advances in ML will render humans irrelevant? Seems to me like the opposite is happening right now.
  - sorokod 9y ago
    They are unlikely to be the same people and it is likely that less people will be required.

sorokod 9y ago

Not necessarily. It just means that ML based approach may be better than whatever it is we humans do in enough tasks to make the humans irrelevant. Think calligraphy Vs. the printing press.

astrodust 9y ago
I'm sure some people thought the printing press was the devil incarnate as it took the human element out of books. Prior to that every letter, every page, was produced with some measure of human effort. Holding that work, reading those letters, was something special. Now there's no direct physical connection between what we write and the book someone holds, yet we don't run around screaming that automated printing has destroyed writing. With intelligence this is likely to be the same thing: AI can amplify regular intelligence just as the printing press can amplify the ability of one writer to reach more people.
- pixl97 9y ago
  >yet we don't run around screaming that automated printing has destroyed writing. I disagree in part. There have been many complaints voiced about bots in modern digital book distribution producing tons of crap and flooding markets like amazon.com with junk. It doesn't take very many processes like this to produce a corpus of information larger than has been created by mankind. So in some sense of the word, bots have 'destroyed' writing by volume. Now that said, most of it will never be seen in a place where it causes interruption to shoppers or readers, as it will get filtered out by the distributors. That said, this makes a mess of unfiltered distributed systems of digital books.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    Where bots can flood the market with junk, bots can flag and remove junk books, or at least push them down in terms of visibility. The problem is Amazon doesn't seem the least bit motivated to even try here.
runeks 9y ago
> It just means that ML based approach may be better than whatever it is we humans do in enough tasks to make the humans irrelevant. Given that more and more people are employed in ML-related jobs, what makes you think advances in ML will render humans irrelevant? Seems to me like the opposite is happening right now.
- sorokod 9y ago
  They are unlikely to be the same people and it is likely that less people will be required.