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Issue #8 of the
Infinite Waves
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A ‘bit’ is a physical object that can have two possible states that can switch from one to the other. Specifically in computers it is a point in space where electricity is either on or off.
It forms the basic principle of a logic gate, a device in which inputs and outputs can either be on or off.
To make a computer you, fundamentally, just need lots of logic gates that can then form lots of bits. That’s all computers really are, bits.
It wouldn’t be very efficient or fun if we had to interface with the computer in this way, using bits. The bits, the ons and offs, become ones and zeroes. They go through levels of abstraction before they eventually become our desktop displays and computer programmes.
But in the end, under the hood, it’s all just bits. The software you might run, like photoshop, with all the tools and pixels to create your dankest memes. That’s all 1s and 0s. It all gets abstracted away to something more usable at a higher level by us.
It is kind of analogous to how we learn as humans. As infants we start with some simple bits. Hot and cold. light and dark. yes or no. And eventually we abstract up to higher levels until we’re speaking in full language and thinking in concepts, translating thought and engaging in sophisticated actions and processes.
We have fundamental drives to survive. The feeling of hunger and needing to eat. We abstracted those desires into words to express to parents when we were hungry or needed help.
And then, we can imagine each sufficiently abstracted human on the planet as a node. A single brain, that to some extent is part of an invisible network of all the other brains that wraps around the globe, all connected by their ability to bootstrap up from simple bits and be able to do complex actions. Vast swathes of the global population collaborate and communicate. It is a spectrum, starting out at an individual level, then families, communities, cities, countries, and continents. Layers of abstraction.
And, now with the Internet the brains and the abstractions are manifested digitally. Each person, each computer, being a node. It doesn’t, yet, involve the entire planet, but the penetration is growing and at some point in the future everyone that can be on the Internet will be. Whether their input is direct or indirect.
And so what of the next abstraction? If Artificial General Intelligence (AGI, a system that is as capable as a human in all domains) is achieved, it is postulated that it won’t be too long after that when it would reach Superintelligence level. That is to say, it would be thousands (eventually millions?) of times smarter than even the smartest human we can rustle up. This is because it would have the ability to re-write its own algorithms and could access the Internet and therefore all of human data and knowledge.
It would analyse and synthesise. It will be the ultimate abstraction from when Homo Sapiens first created basic tools using rocks and sticks. These primitive gadgets were an augmentation of our intelligence and ingenuity.
It is a funny thought to think then, that in this way we would be, conceptually, the billions of bits and the Super AI would be the super computer, highly abstracted from the primitive human nodes that made it up.
But after every abstraction there seems to be another. So the question arises, would the Super AI have another layer of abstraction beyond?
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