I'm a bit hesitant to go much further than saying it might happen within five years, because honestly, I have very low confidence in my ability to make accurate predictions about when — or even if — AI will surpass human intelligence. But hey, we’re all speculating in good spirits, so here’s my two cents:
With very low confidence in my own forecast, I predict that within five years, we’ll have an AI that’s smarter than the smartest human alive today — though not radically smarter. Think of it like comparing a top university professor to a hardworking high school student who has a personal tutor and still struggles to pass. It won’t be like comparing a human to an amoeba — more like a few rungs up the same ladder, not a leap into another dimension. And also not in all aspects of human intelligence - true creativity will still elude them. Here’s what motivates my prediction: 1. The current AI architecture is still very basic. Modern AI is mostly built on simple artificial neurons stacked in sequential layers — a kind of top-down, hierarchical design. The human brain, by contrast, is a bottom-up system with a staggering degree of interconnectedness. In our brains, any neuron could, in theory, connect to any other neuron. It’s a complex, messy web — and that “messiness” seems to be a feature, not a bug. I won’t attempt the math, but the possible combinations in a fully interconnected system are orders of magnitude beyond what our current layer-based architectures can achieve. So to get an AI that’s to humans what humans are to apes, we’ll need a radically different neural structure — not just a bigger one. 2. Still, with clever hacks, we’ll get surprisingly far. Even with today’s limited architecture, I think we’ll soon see AI systems capable of holding down very high-level roles — say, serving as second-in-command to a human CEO, taking care of day-to-day operations while the CEO focuses on vision and strategy (with a human board still making the big calls). You might also have a robotic butler that understands and fulfills your wishes better than any human could. What I don’t see coming soon is an AI you can form a deep, personal relationship with — not in any real, human sense. Maybe we’ll get one that can run a country better than a certain T-guy... but that’s such a low bar, it’s not exactly a convincing benchmark. On Fri, 20 Jun 2025 at 23:30, Marcus Daniels <[email protected]> wrote: > Perfect. I think I might like Ross Douthat even less. 😊 > > > > *From: *Friam <[email protected]> on behalf of Santafe < > [email protected]> > *Date: *Friday, June 20, 2025 at 2:23 PM > *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > [email protected]> > *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] AI > > This is an interesting direction. > > > > On Jun 21, 2025, at 5:46, Jochen Fromm <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > I believe it will be possible. > > > > Will it be a good idea? I don't know. In science fiction movies AIs often > start to kill their creators. "Ex machina" for example is the story of such > an AI developed by the CEO of a large corporation > > https://youtu.be/sNExF5WYMaA > > > > Then there is the possibility of massive unemployment because AI takes > away the good, creative jobs. Claude's capabilities in programming are > impressive. Stackoverflow is already in a crisis because developers ask > ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude instead. More and more employees will lose their > jobs. It doesn't look good. > > https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/17/business/amazon-ai-human-employees-jobs > > > > Following the article Jochen forwarded, there is another in the same > channel: > > AI warnings are the hip new way for CEOs to keep their workers afraid of > losing their jobs | CNN Business > <https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/18/business/ai-warnings-ceos?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc> > > edition.cnn.com > <https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/18/business/ai-warnings-ceos?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc> > > It says what it says. I won’t tie myself to or away from it. > > > > I have been thinking for some weeks about the “pro-natalist” crowd, since > they came up a few months ago. > > > > As in all this, people can come up with a narrative for pretty-much any > position, and we are left (if we want to say something meaningful about > causation) to figure out which, if any, of these narratives has anything to > do with why something becomes “a movement”, to which many of the > narrative-spinners are just fabric and hangers-on. So there can be > disingenuous (self-disingenuous?) saps and shills like Ross Doubthat of NYT > who have all sorts of old-fashion-values arguments about natalism. > > > > But to me the structure is: they are pushing somebody to have lots of > babies at exactly the time they are engineering a world to eliminate > anything like a human life for the babies already had. I don’t think the > timing-congruence of those two things is coincidence and unconnected to > causation. > > > > It’s clear that falling birthrates seem like a godsend if one thinks > population must decrease, but doesn’t want that to happen by wars and > disease epidemics, with lots of acute suffering. So for whom is it really > not a godsend? Well, for people who can’t live without “being supported”. > There are real suffering-issues for aging populations who currently depend > on getting crumbs from the big economies for their subsistence. But we > probably produce enough, and have enough legacy-stuff, that if we really > wanted their lives to have manageable suffering, we could achieve that > through redistribution for however long it will take the various > generations to die off. For whom, then, is redistribution off the table > and they need the “economy” (whatever that is turning into) to be big? The > ones who take almost-all of it, for whom there is no redistribution left to > capture. > > > > So the pro-natalist movement, in the current context of the feudalization > of everything, seems to me like it drives paleo-feudalism into something > that is no longer distinct from arguments for slavery, and maybe even > stronger than that, to arguments for something more like livestock. > > > > Dunno. Probably I just repeat statements of the obvious, or things that > are already in the air all around us. > > > > Eric > > > > > > > > > > > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / > ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >
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