What is the future of intelligence?

Someone once figured out that if the automobile industry had upgraded its technology at the same rate as the computer industry has we would now have Rolls-Royces selling for around $2.75 each and running a million miles to a gallon of fuel.

This is a clever analogy. But not quite on target. If the auto industry had improved its technology at the same rate as the computer sciences have it wouldn't be manufacturing automobiles at all. It would have evolved beyond the automobile—to individual vertical-lift systems. We would all now be flying around using jet-packs and rocket-belts and sport helicopters.

Since the 1940s automobiles have improved very little. During the same time we have evolved from room-size semimoronic computers to molecule-size whiz micro micros—agile robots—supercomputers and other ultraintelligent machines.

Suddenly something new is crystallizing in our human environment —the introduction of synthetic (electronic) intelligence.

We are learning to quantify and organize intelligence.

Every day we are creating smarter and smarter machines.

Every day these smart machines themselves go on to create smarter machines.

Every day these smart machines are incorporated into more and more areas of our environment: intelligent telephones—intelligent compu­ters—intelligent buildings—intelligent helicopters.

Every day these smart machines and we humans are merging: intel­ligent prostheses—intelligent limbs—intelligent pacemakers—etc.

Electronic intelligence is still crude. But in a twenty-year period this new intelligence is racing ahead at a rate roughly equivalent to a million years in human evolution.

At this rate of growth in twenty or thirty years (around 2020) we will have ultraintelligent machines that in every way will think better than today's humans.

But we are not standing still either. As machines grow smarter we grow smarter.

We are like parents who have to continually realign simply to keep up with their smart children and smarter grandchildren.

If we people do not upgrade our intelligence—in thirty or forty years we will be obsolete. These emerging ultraintelligences may then "decide to keep us as pets" as Marvin Minsky who works in this field has noted.

I sometimes hear alarmists express the fear that intelligent machines may "take over." My main worry has been how much longer semi-intelligent people in government and in private industry will continue to make a mess of things.

The good news though is that intelligent machines are here to stay and grow and spread. Smarter and smarter machines are helping amplify our intelligence: remote monitors and scanners—instant feedback and playback mechanisms—memory reset—-computer simulation—per­sonal data bases—expert systems and other decision-assists—malfunc­tion alert devices—collision-avoidance and fault-isolation mechanisms and much more.

The relatively intelligent environments within our spacecraft and space platforms are this very day replicated in small specialized areas of our lives here on earth. Barring an unexpected catastrophe in the coming decades we will live in increasingly intelligent environments and deal more and more intelligently with our lives.

When we speak of consciousness raising we really mean raising the level of our intelligence.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 708