The symbiotic relationship between humans and artificial intelligence

Often AGI, or ‘human-level AI’ is considered the holy grail of AI research. It’s even in the name, human level AI. Why are we so obsessed with getting to a human level? What’s the relation of AI to humans? And what’s our role in a symbiotic relationship between human and computer?

A popular argument to diminish advancement in AI can be summarized by this quote from Peter Thiel.

However, many of the breakthroughs in deep learning usually stem from trying to learn the AI to develop an intuition. By stapling multiple algorithms together the AI learns to do things in a smarter way, instead of brute-forcing its way through the dataset. This also allows us to achieve more with fewer data.

Thirdly, our world is shaped towards human cognition. We externalised a big part of our intelligence to our society. We are smart because we are modules in a big world, whether it is financial or political. It’s comparing apples to oranges if you compare us as a whole, the hive mind, to one AI system alone. But this is a big factor in the differences on how we perform. AI systems usually stand alone. There also seems to be a limit on what we as a society can consume on intelligence. Even the smartest people with IQ’s of 130+ don’t seem to be much more successful throughout their lives over people with ‘just’ an IQ of 130. If others do not understand, and cannot consume that wisdom it is partly pointless. This is limiting the true potential of AI for now. AI can only advance as fast as humans can keep up with it. To find the balance between human and AI will definitely be an important part of developing AI towards an AGI. The human factor might be the one that limits AI development the most. And therefore it’s important that people with different backgrounds help AI systems and AI researchers understand how these systems work precisely. It’s likely that we have to recreate some fundamentals of society to fully embed AI’s full potential. The technical perspective is a lot easier to imagine compared to the societal changes that are probably required.

Consciousness is not binary, it’s a matter of degree. There is a difference between the level of consciousness between, humans and other animals, adults and children, and even between adults. Consciousness is a structure of thoughts, or at a deeper level just neurons. All these things combined make me think that it’s not impossible to make a machine conscious. It will be a matter of degrees, but a computer doesn’t necessarily have to stop at the human level. We can train our brain to become more conscious, but there will be a different physical limit than that of a computer. I do believe that this is hardest of the four differences between humans and computers for computers to solve. Not in the last place because this is also the area where we understand the least of our own capabilities. Therefore I think this will also be the area where humans will contribute the most to the long-term symbiotic relationship between humans and computers.

In the long term, it’s unclear to me what the human role will be. Will we just be the monkey in the loop that slows progress down? Will evolution take care of that problem? And if so, how? Clearly, we don’t have answers to those questions yet. Our biggest strength over AI is our conscious experience. We can give meaning and purpose to what AI will invent for and with us. Computers are very task driven if they don’t have a purpose they don’t do anything. We are the ones that give it purpose. AI might be able to simulate empathy (and potentially consciousness), but it doesn’t have a clear path to experience it as well. As Brynjolfsson noted, the saddest outcome would be if we invent AI systems as a way to kill each other and or make each other miserable. If we don’t derive pleasure and meaning out of our world, then wouldn’t it be just a colossal waste of space?

In my next blog, I will go deeper into the symbiotic relationship between human and computer. What is the current relationship, and what does the foreseeable future look like?

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