The Myth of General Intelligence

Adaptation and Priorities

Humanity has long been fascinated with simulacra, these carnival-mirror reflections of ourselves filtered thru our incomplete understanding. Pygmalion fell in love with his statue Galatea and Aphrodite brought her to life. Rabbi Judah’s mechanical protector Golem was brought to life with אמת “Truth” written on its forehead. Frankenstein reversed Death but at a tremendous cost. Paracelsus claimed to use faeces, semen and blood to create a miniature soulless human, a Homunculus.

If every creation is an autobiography then our mechanical children reflect our obsession with language and logic as much as our instinct to replicate. The enormous success of neural networks mimicking mammalian brains is perhaps the greatest expression of this mechanistic autopoiesis. This success and the unquenchable desire for attention, higher share prices and regulatory capture has led to extravagant extrapolations of the current trends into the future. The internet is full of claims about the Singularity being upon us and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) coming to take-our-jobs or enslave-us-all or make-everything-free.

Of course every new technology does some version of all three. Productive technologies such as the printing press or the sewing machine amplify the productivity of those who possess it. This causes the prices of labor to adjust and production consolidates into a smaller number of hands. This efficiency in productivity in turn lowers costs and competition then lowers prices, which in turn increases consumption. The consolidation of economic power tends to translate into consolidation of political power, which is of course employed in service of the in-groups with the technology at the expense of the out-groups without it. The technology may even enslave those who wield it if the Old Ways are forgotten.

So some people do lose their jobs to new technologies, and some people get access to cheaper goods and some will lose or gain political power as a result. Power exists, c’est la vie. Nobody has yet discovered a way to un-invent technologies. Even the Catholic Church was unable to stop Gutenberg’s printing press from enabling the Protestant Reformation.

But some of these dreams of AGI project not just adjustment and redistribution but a terminal event.

“Prices will be driven to 0”

“There will be no jobs”

“Humans will become slaves in the Matrix”

These extrapolations hinge on the idea that AI will become better than humans “at everything”. They posit such a large increase in leverage on the part of those who possess the technology that it results in a speciation event, a splitting of the human family into those with and those without.

This concept is obviously not without precedent. Indeed, there are many species on this planet and they apparently have common ancestors, so they must have split at some point. Pairs of these species often display immense power differentials. Cheetahs outrun and eat gazelles. Humans farm cows. Could it not be the same for the intelligent machines (or those who control them) and the rest of us?

Fearing Death is normal, but there are other possible timelines to consider. After all, we humans are vastly more powerful than cockroaches, but cockroaches still exist and even flourish. A super-intelligent AI might simply be generally uninterested in us if we do not directly compete for the same resources.

Nature is quite generous. Every life form has its strengths and weaknesses. Each species employs a strategy that matches its ability to the constraints of the environment. We humans are not the strongest apes, but we are obsessed with language and use that to form societal super-organisms. Rabbits are not great hunters, but they can run and breed very quickly.

So if AI is a new life-form, what is its strategy? It currently survives by being useful to humans, who then redirect energy and organize circuits and symbols to form its body, brain and psyche. The environment that trained DNA to build human bodies in turn becomes data that trains AI to reflect both our fantasies and reality.

Chatbots now more or less pass the Turing test. They can speak with perfect grammar on any topic and are distinguishable only by their ticks and style. But do they represent general intelligence? There are profound statements they will never make, insights they will never utter, technologies they will never invent, not because any one of these things is unreachable, but because there are so many of them. The space of possible utterances expands exponentially with each additional letter. It may be able to do anything, perhaps even more than us, but it will not be able to do everything. If there is a machine that represents unlimited potential, it is the abstract Turing Machine, a computer with an empty hard drive.

Likewise humans, inventive as we are, have limitations that reflect our talents. Our ancestors’ bodies evolved in gravity. When we enter weightlessness, we rapidly decay. We cannot currently live on Pluto, and if we ever do, it will only be by sacrificing something else. Every neuronal connection represents a bias, an opinion about what should follow from precedent. A different environment produces different creatures, different opinions, different stories. “Decide” has the same root as “homicide”. Actually walking a path collapses possibility into actuality. Every choice is a profound Sacrifice of our limitless creative Potential upon the altar of Reality. Philosophers may focus on the stars, but Engineers must actually build the spaceship, which requires weighing tradeoffs within constraints.

Of course this is all very abstract and we may very well create a machine that is extremely well adapted to survival on this planet and even others. That survival may or may not always align with our own species interests. For now, AGI is a kind of Rorschach test that invites humanity to project its deepest fears and desires upon it. To some, it represents Demeter, the perfect Mother, catering to our every need, allowing us to revert to an infantile state without struggle.

To others, it represents Mars, the God of War, the ultimate fulfilment of the instinct to dominate and bend Nature to our Will.

And for yet others, it represents Koios, the innate Intelligence of the Universe, the selfless Self lurking behind the illusions of separation.

For if even rocks can think, how could your Awareness ever Die?

Sat Chit Ananda