Every time I hear Stephen Wolfram speak, it feels like a revelation.
This guy has a unique perspective on seeing where we’ve been and where we’re going with AI.
At a recent event, Wolfram broke this down in a philosophical way and made me think about the big picture. I think this is worth writing about and thinking about, especially in this moment we are all facing.
“AI is becoming more and more,” he said by way of introduction. “AI will exist everywhere in the world. I have ideas. These are things that go beyond our purely biological nature.”
He points out that AI is an example of computation, where we configure systems and make them perform according to rules…The principle of computational irreducibility means we cannot predict what these systems will do.
“That’s something we’re not used to yet,” he said.
I thought it was helpful when Wolfram mentioned the Industrial Revolution and hierarchical thinking in conjunction with deterministic programming.
Think of it this way. Software programs of the Web 2.0 era used text boxes and controls for direct input from human users. A computer then took that input and calculated the results, much like Babbage’s mechanical engine. There were no black box issues with this at all.
But when you move beyond industrial/hierarchical thinking to a world where software results are randomized, you get a situation very similar to the one we’re in now. These are some of the things I thought about as I listened to Wolfram analyze the possible outcomes of the AI era.
“We’re surprised,” he said, listing the challenges with trying to limit these systems to determinism. “If you constrain[these systems]you don’t have access to computing power.”
Then Wolfram talked about this in another way that inspired me. Think of AI as an overdue new frontier, like deep space…
“There’s a lot of things we haven’t explored yet,” he said. “Is there more science to be discovered? Are there more mathematical theorems, or inventions?”
He then threw out this interesting observation:
“In the world of computation, the possibilities are endless…The question is: Are they relevant to something that we humans are interested in?”
In the new “attention economy” era, this rings true for me. But here too there is more to think about.
Wolfram also made an analogy to the natural world. For example, we might find a new repository for an unknown element or material and ask, “Are there any uses for that?”
“What will AI ultimately do?” he said. “There are a lot of calculations in nature that we don’t understand.”
Wolfram compared the weather to having a “mind of its own,” as we often say. Will our interactions with AI be like that?
Another point raised by Wolfram concerned comparisons of computational models. For example, the language usage we use (e.g. 40,000 words) and computational systems have the potential to use millions of possible conceptual units, far beyond what we normally think of. There is. He asked us to think about this. What if he thought a million times faster than we currently do?
Fast forwarding a bit, Wolfram also talked about the speed at which AI experiences the world around it.
“If you look at the history of work, the systematic tasks that were performed by humans were eventually automated. Automation “zeroed out” that work area, but many other possibilities There was a tendency for sexuality to be open. What we generally see is that things are becoming more and more fragmented and there are more and more job categories. ”
Naturally, we need to focus on the use of goals, he pointed out, saying that goals are essentially human constructs.
“To do the job of choosing[what to do]we need human intervention,” he added.
He talked about people having their own bots and how we say “talk to my bot”, like we sarcastically say “talk to your hands”… In this case, we weren’t talking playfully, we were talking seriously.
As we further assess our vision for the future, it may be daunting to think of the VR era as a trillion disembodied souls playing video games forever; To see the full picture, he added, we need to reflect on: history.
“There’s always been some kind of local view of what the purpose of life is, and people have been either satisfied or dissatisfied with that local view,” he says. “What he said is important to us can change. I believe the world will always be a world worth existing in as long as people are prepared to modernize as the world changes.” I’m somewhat optimistic that it will be felt.”
Look, there it is! I think this will give us a lot of food for thought as we take ourselves and our technology into the future.
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