Get this on your reading list…
A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains by Max Bennett
This book helped me immensely with my understanding of human and artificial intelligence.
Three data points:
1) The simulation gap explains why AI can beat a chess grandmaster, but it can't load a dishwasher: A human brain has a neocortex, which allows it to simulate possible outcomes of actions before taking them. Think planning, recalling past events, and more efficient learning by imagination. Bennett argues that current AI systems lack this.
2) Reinforcement learning is 500 million years old; AI just rediscovered it: Human life acquired the capability to learn to repeat behaviors that lead to good or bad outcomes. AI reinforcement learning is just beginning, but the brain does it with far less data and energy; a human is far more energy-efficient.
3) AI can't read the room: Humans have developed the ability to track what other individuals know, want, and intend. Humans understand context and have high EQ. Current AI lacks this ability.
Bennett concludes that AI systems' evolution won't be constrained by biology the way ours was, so that the next breakthrough could compress millions of years of evolutionary time into years of engineering.
Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.
-Marc.
You can always reach me @ marc@caracal.global.
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Marc A. Ross is a geopolitical strategist and the founder of Caracal Global, a fractional Chief Geopolitical Officer service for Fortune 1,000 companies and private equity firms. He publishes the Caracal Global Daily — what a Chief Geopolitical Officer monitors every morning. Subscribe at caracal.global/contact.
