Comment by efitz
2 days ago
AI has made me question what it is to be a human.
I am not having some existential crisis, but if we get to a point where X% of humans cannot outperform “AI” on any task that humans deem “useful”, for some nontrivial value of X, then many assumptions that culture has inculcated into me about humanity are no longer valid.
What is the role of humans then?
Can it be said that humans “think” if they can’t think a thought that a non thinking AI cannot also think?
If all humans were suddenly wiped off the face of the earth, AI would go silent, and the hardware it runs on would eventually shut down.
If all AI was suddenly wiped off the face of the earth, humans would rebuild it, and would carry on fine in the meantime.
One AI researcher decades ago said something to the effect of: researchers in biology look at living organisms and wonder how they live; researchers in physics look at the cosmos and wonder what all is out there; researchers in artificial intelligence look at computer systems and wonder how they can be made to wonder such things.
The current AI SoTA.
But the "AI" is simply a gestalt of all human language. You're looking in a mirror.