Humanity’s Psychological Disruption Relative to Artificial Intelligence
We humans that are alive now are the first iteration of humanity to have to psychologically adapt to sharing the planet with an equal or superior intelligence. We have always thought, accepted or “known” that our species is the most intelligent on earth. To some degree and certainly increasing in the years ahead, that is no longer the case.
As I have written and spoken here, I think that the description “Artificial Intelligence” is a temporary name we are using for Machine Learning. I looked up the word “intelligence” in several dictionaries and nowhere in the definition is the word “human” used. Intelligence is simply intelligence. Dolphins have it, whales have it and many think our pets have it.
So, my thinking is that one of the reasons we are using the phrase “Artificial Intelligence” is that it both puts it into a box and lessens it relative to us. As in it is artificial, not real. It is real. The true and proper term for what we call “Artificial Intelligence” is Machine Learning.
I have spoken and written here that, through time, I think that the word “Artificial” will fall away and we will both use Machine Learning and accept that we have entered the “Age of Intelligence”. This is one of the most significant historic transits in human history. The confluence of human intelligence, machine learning, the amazing breakthroughs in neuroscience and the explosion of Big Data, due in large part to the Internet of Things, will create and usher in a fundamental restructuring in society, how we live, economics and markets. Entire employment categories will move from human effort to machine effort. As the great Arthur C. Clarke said some 70 years ago: “The goal of the future is full unemployment”.
We worry about being dominated by ‘”robotic overlords”. Probably not, but that phrase points to the psychological unease we feel about machine learning.
From a karmic perspective, humanity has killed off a large number of species. Currently today 150 species – plant and animal- become extinct every day due to how humanity conducts itself on Spaceship Earth. Maybe humanity’s karma at this point in history is that we have created something that might render our species as unneeded.
So, accept a new form of intelligence that, if we face it fully, might usher in a new evolutionary step for humanity.
