> Now, we’re months away from AI reaching cosmologically significant powers, making everything that came before it—humanity, the cognitive revolution, writing, the telegraph, smartphones—seem insignificant by comparison.
What a dystopian world view. Even if AGI comes to fruition, which is not certain, that does not invalidate humanity's significance.
Your excitement is exactly what is dystopian - instead of writing that you are excited for something new to add to our experience, you wrote that it diminishes humanity into insignificance. Maybe you did not mean it that strongly, but that is how I read your statement.
I did not say that it is diminished. Maybe I didn't express myself very well, though. If artificial intelligence takes over the universe, its origins in biological intelligence on planet earth will remain just as important, even more, but will be proportionally insignificant.
>Now, we’re months away from AI reaching cosmologically significant powers, making everything that came before it—humanity, the cognitive revolution, writing, the telegraph, smartphones—seem insignificant by comparison.
I'd bet my life savings against $100 that we will not have strong AI with "cosmologically significant powers" that makes "everything that came before it...seem insignificant" in less than 12 months. I'd give 10:1 on two years, and 2:1 on five years.
Agree that "months" is a bit hyperbolic. But note that 20 months or 70 months is still months :D The important point is, it's going to happen very soon in historical context.
On the one hand - yeah. If you bothered to listen to grandma's stories when you were a kid, you're quite aware that the world changed a LOT between when she was a little girl, and your own childhood. Only an idiot would expect change to stop.
OTOH, there were thousands of generations where very little changed in an average human lifetime. People's worldviews are far more instinctual than most care to admit, and "steady-state" instincts would have been selected for.
What a dystopian world view. Even if AGI comes to fruition, which is not certain, that does not invalidate humanity's significance.