Comment by jquery

This isn’t my only objection to the “superintelligence” hocus pocus, but it’s a pretty good summary of one of my objections:

https://www.everythingisbullshit.blog/p/ai-is-not-the-end-of...

> Doomers like Eliezer Yudkowsky define “intelligence” as “optimization power.” Intelligence searches for more or less optimal ways to achieve a goal—any goal—and finds the most optimal one. Anything you can do, the blob can do better.

>Which implies that “intelligence” is the holy grail of Darwinian evolution. If an animal needs to recover from illness, “intelligence” can speed up the recovery. If an animal needs to avoid predators, “intelligence” can reduce the danger. Regulating body temperature, defending territory, digesting nutrients, breathing, molting, mating, healing, foraging, vomiting, parenting, navigating—all these problems can, apparently, be solved by giving the animal more “optimization power”—i.e., more “intelligence” sauce.

>Solving all your problems with the same blob? What a bargain! It’s a “buy one get 100 free” Darwinian deal! Why haven’t any other animals jumped on it?

>Think about how weird this is. Out of four billion years of evolution and more than five billion species, only one animal, Homo sapiens, fully expanded its “blob of compute,” the thing that literally gets you whatever you want.

>And many species already have it! Brains are all over the place. Plenty of animals can learn stuff and predict stuff. Why hasn’t natural selection looked at their blobs and said, “HOLY SHIT, COPY AND PASTE THAT THING A MILLION TIMES?”

>If doomers are right about the awesome power and breathtaking simplicity of “intelligence,” then we should see a world teeming with superintelligent animals—giant brain-blobs slithering across the landscape.