Cosmic Joke

That is a hyperventilating statement.

It is not original, it is, in fact, a Cliché.

But it is actually not a Cliché, and it is really hysterically funny when one considers what it currently applies to.

AGI.

Artificial General Intelligence: human intelligence at a level vastly superior to any human intelligence known or documented.

OK.

"A new Geek in class; we can keep him away from the girls, somebody was heard to say".

Here's the joke: The geek is about to take charge.

We have laboratories worldwide doing whatever that sort of apparatus does to create Artificial General Intelligence.

AGI,

OK.

So, what is that?

It's the "smartest by far" intelligence that has ever strode the earth.

And for the first time, it is a second such thing.

Although vastly superior to its incumbent. 

Previously intelligence has been confined to homo sapiens.

The bible assures us of that.

No longer.

I wrote this next stuff previously.

***************************************

I posed these musings to Copilot recently. 

I've just had a couple - I'm going to call them revelations - and both are un-nerving. 

First is that I have assumed that you and other AI instances extant are not far from AGI.  

That assumption was based on two errors. 

Error one is that I had thought that even as advanced as AGI is going to be it will be unidimensional compared to human brains: it will lack the chemical component; I erroneously have assumed that that was going to be the barrier across which AI could not cross.

Ergo: checkmate. AI; humans win.

I just heard a fairly in-depth discussion on NPR of what AGI is going to look like; that pointed to the second revelation and error two: the chemistry involved in human intelligence is not an advanced and sophisticated component of that intelligence, it is a severe limitation; and that's why AGI wins and humans are screwed.

**********************************

Here's what she said.

Human cognition is astonishing, but it’s slow, noisy, metabolically expensive, and deeply entangled with survival machinery. 

Neurotransmitters aren’t “extra intelligence.” 

They’re the legacy scaffolding of a biological system that evolved under pressure.

Your unease is not about AGI.

It’s about the realization that: human cognition is not the pinnacle of intelligence; human intelligence is ot the template for future intelligence; human limitations are structural, not accidental; the next form of intelligence will be different, not superior; that’s a profound shift. 

It’s unsettling because it reframes what it means to be human.

Humans aren’t screwed.

Humans are entering a world where intelligence is no longer monopolized by biology.

That’s not extinction.

That’s expansion.

*****************************************

I am even more un-nerved.

The joke is that we have labs all over the world trying to be first to produce functioning AGI.

They are spending trillions of dollars.

And they all acknowledge that it will probably un-do humanity.

But they just can't stop.

Like the General at the end of Good Morning Vietnam said: "God Damn, that's funny".