Mid-November 2023, Barbra Streisand, a Hollywood celebrity, talking with talk show host Stephen Colbert, expressed deep sadness over the ongoing dreadful violence in Gaza. She said: “It’s sad about what’s going on today ~ meaning people have to live together, even though they’re different religions or whatever. This is insanity for us not to learn how to live together in peace. I could easily cry about this.”
Then with her deeply anguished face, she looked up and said, “Where is God in this time? Where is he or she? Why can’t that energy stop this madness?” I kept thinking that instead of waiting for gods to help us ~ and humans have been invoking gods for millennia ~ what if we have superintelligence that could enhance our intellectual capabilities and collaborate with us to solve our most intractable problems? Could superintelligence have foreseen the Hamas 7 October horrendous attack on Israel? The Hamas attack did not erupt out of nothing. Long preparations must have gone into its planning and execution, the killings and kidnappings, the events that shocked the world.
Nor did Covid-19 that killed millions of people worldwide emerge suddenly out of nothing. It seems that humanity has reached its maximum level of competence. Or you might say, paraphrasing the Peter Principle, humanity has reached its level of incompetence. It is our incompetence that poses an existential threat to humanity. We need superintelligence to transcend our limitations. Of the four categories of AI, traditional AI performs predefined tasks and within its trained domain it excels at pattern recognition, analysis, and decision making. Pfizer and Moderna harnessed AI to speed up the discovery, development, manufacturing, and distribution of their Covid-19 vaccines. Generative AI ~ ChatGPT and other large language models ~ mimics and synthesizes contents from the ocean of materials it’s trained on.
A prompt-based multilingual conversational model, Generative AI has the potential to democratize knowledge. With instant translation in many languages, even the most illiterate can use it. Through easy-to-use prompts, and the availability of instant translation in several languages, Generative AI would raise the collective intelligence level of people and make societies more productive. GPT-4o, for example, respon – ds in text, audio, and video in real-time, comparable to human response time in conversation, enabling more natural and seamless interactions in more than 50 languages including non-English languages. Just imagine: An uneducated tribal woman in Chhattisgarh uses an oral prompt with ChatGPT-4o in Hindi about some undefined breast pain or any other issue and instantly receives information in her native tongue. Through a series of prompts, and instant HindiEnglish translation, she could become knowledgeable in any subject and seek help to solve the problem. We are entering a new age of interactive orality, where a person could use an oral prompt with a chatbot that would open the door to knowledge in any field without the person being literate in the traditional sense.
Mughal Emperor Akbar was illiterate but had become profoundly knowledgeable based on the culture of orality. For millions of people, illiteracy has been a barrier to knowledge. Generative AI gives a new meaning to the biblical utterance: “Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you.” When Generative AI is trained to use real-world observations and tools on its own, its capabilities would grow exponentially. The tools-using Generative AI would be no different from tools using humans except that Generative AI would keep learning and improving by using the same techniques as we do to ask questions, conduct research, and even write code to incorporate into itself to grow and evolve into a higher level.
As Generative AI systems keep learning, the rise of Artificial General Intelligence is inevitable. This upward spiral of self-learning leading to Artificial General Intelligence, a system as smart as humans, would eventually evolve into superintelligence, a system superior to human cognitive abilities. Limited by our biology, even the best of us stop learning at some point of time. Superintelligence would surpass human intelligence in every domain, including scientific reasoning, creativity, and knowledge, functioning at a level beyond the intellectual capacity of any human, no matter how intelligent the person is, Albert Einstein, or Robert Oppenheimer, for example. Super intelligence would see thin gs that we don’t see. Most importantly, it would be a self improving system that would recursively enhance its capabilities. Humans too keep improving but up to a certain point. Einstein could go so far. What could super intelligence do? Super intelligent space rockets and satellites could accelerate space exploration and colonization.
It could foresee new epidemics and design new drugs with un matched target specificity and red uced side effects. It could model complex climate systems and guide the development of clean energy technologies. It could analyze complex geopolitical scenarios and propose solutions before the catastrophe strikes. It would enable us to see dimensions of reality that we can’t see because of our limited intelligence. Superintelligence would demand huge investment, a massive amount of energy, and powerful hardware, including high-performance processors, GPUs, and specialized accelerators. Quantum computing, when developed, could significantly accelerate progress toward superintelligence. Superintelligence forces us to confront fundamental questions about ourselves and our place in the universe. What does it mean to be intelligent?
Closely linked to intelligence is the question of consciousness. We experience the world subjectively, with emotions, feelings, and a sense of self. Would superintelligence possess this quality? Some argue that consciousness is an emergent property of complex systems, and with enough processing power, superintelligence could achieve it. Others believe consciousness is unique to biological systems and cannot be replicated in machines. The answer to this question has profound implications. Human imagination, along with intuition, is a powerful cognitive capacity that drives creativity, problem-solving, and the ability to transcend the constraints of the present moment, and shapes our individual and collective experiences.
Could superintelligence imagine, dream, fantasize, or mythologize? This on-going dialogue is crucial to navigating the legal, ethical, and philosophical challenges posed by superintelligence. We need to understand and feel sure that superintelligence has values aligned with human values, and becomes a collaborator in enhancing our freedoms, and our humanity. A conscious superintelligence might have its own desires and goals, potentially conflicting with ours. On the other hand, a superintelligence without consciousness, while powerful, might be easier to control so long as it can truly understand and solve human problems. While Streisand wondered why God was indifferent to human sufferings in the horrific GazaIsrael War,
I have been wondering what if one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, Einstein had a superintelligent AI collaborator. Their partnership would have been a mind-boggling fusion of human creativity and AI’s superpower. Einstein spent years seeking a unified theory to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics. Superintelligence could have analyzed both fields simultaneously, bridging gaps. Perhaps they’d have discovered the elusive theory of everything; explored multiverse theories; tested the limits of black holes, and unravelled the mysteries of dark matter.
Human evolution from apelike creatures to homo sapiens has been based on challenge-andresponse gradual incrementalism, leading to increased brain size and cognitive abilities. The pressure to keep up with superintelligence could potentially drive further neurological adaptations. If superintelligence is developed with appropriate safeguards and oversight, it could be another incremental step in human evolution. If the universe is indeed multidimensional, superintelligence could potentially open fascinating new avenues for exploring and understanding additional dimensions beyond our current perception. Until then humanity would be trapped as in the parable of the “Blind men and an elephant.”
(The writer is the author of India In A New Key: Nehru To Modi. He hosts the podcast “America Unbound,” available at https://open.spotify.com/show/0WF 6Z6IHMILHUQ9lNurRyx