Comment by Eupraxias
2 years ago
>>Instead of AI making machines smarter, it seems that computers are making humans dumber. Perhaps the AI revolution is about dropping the level of average human intelligence to match the level of a computer. A mental race to the bottom?
I came here to make this comment. Thank you for doing it for me.
I remember feeling shocked when this article appeared in the Atlantic in 2008, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?": https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-goog...
The existence of the article broke Betteridge's law for me. The fact that this phenomenon it is not more widely discussed describes the limit of human intelligence. Which brings me back around to the other side... perhaps we were never as intelligent as we suspected?
> perhaps we were never as intelligent as we suspected?
Yeah, I think you're right. Intelligence is just something our species has evolved as a strategy for survival. It isn't about intelligence, it's about survival.
The cognitive skills needed to survive/navigate/thrive in the digital era are very different than the cognitive skills required to survive in the pre-digital era.
We're biologically programmed through millions of years of evolution to survive in a world of scarcity. Intelligence used to be about tying together small bits of scarce information to find larger patterns so that we can better predict outcomes.
Those skills are being rendered more and more irrelevant in a world of information abundance. Perhaps the "best fit" humans of the future are those that possess new form of "intelligence", relying less on reason and more on the ability to quickly digest the firehose of data thrown at them 24-7.
If so, then the AI we were trying to build in the 1950s would necessarily be different than the AI that our grandchilden would find helpful.
You're dead on. Isn't it wild that despite our seemingly impressive intelligence, such insights never seem to rise to the level of... second nature.
I forgot to add something to my original post. >>"I remember feeling shocked when this article appeared in the Atlantic in 2008..."
At the time I was shocked that the question was even being asked!