Overall I am sympathetic to the authors argument that fear of super ai is overblown. But I do take issue with some of his arguments.
> Even if the smartest physicists were 1,000 times smarter than they are now, without a Collider, they will know nothing new.
I'm not a historian but I have read that some scientific discoveries are made through pure logic. Einstein and relativity come to mind as he was not an empiricist. So perhaps there is some hope that ai can lead to scientific discoveries without experimentation
>So the question is, where is the limit of intelligence? We tend to believe that the limit is way beyond us, way “above” us, as we are “above” an ant. Setting aside the recurring problem of a single dimension, what evidence do we have that the limit is not us? Why can’t we be at the maximum? Or maybe the limits are only a short distance away from us? Why do we believe that intelligence is something that can continue to expand forever?
The idea that humans could, just by chance, be pushing the limits of intelligence strikes me as silly
> Even if the smartest physicists were 1,000 times smarter than they are now, without a Collider, they will know nothing new.
I'm not a historian but I have read that some scientific discoveries are made through pure logic. Einstein and relativity come to mind as he was not an empiricist. So perhaps there is some hope that ai can lead to scientific discoveries without experimentation
>So the question is, where is the limit of intelligence? We tend to believe that the limit is way beyond us, way “above” us, as we are “above” an ant. Setting aside the recurring problem of a single dimension, what evidence do we have that the limit is not us? Why can’t we be at the maximum? Or maybe the limits are only a short distance away from us? Why do we believe that intelligence is something that can continue to expand forever?
The idea that humans could, just by chance, be pushing the limits of intelligence strikes me as silly