How AI could shape our future as humans
Sydney / Australia
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Sydney / Australia 〰️
TL;DR: An evolutionary biologist, an AI expert, and a journalist walk into a bar the Sydney Opera House.
So what? As we get comfy with AIs finishing our sentences, our brains might evolve in response.
Venture capitalists, incumbent businesses, and startups alike have flocked to generative AI’s promise of value creation faster than an elder millennial to a Taylor Swift concert ticket queue. It’s understandable, with dominant players like OpenAI recently seeking a valuation of USD$90 billion. However at AI: The Human Interface, an event hosted by the Sydney Opera House, two leading scientists from the University of New South Wales explored a different side of artificial intelligence.
The event featured Toby Walsh, a leading AI authority, and evolutionary biologist Robert Brooks, with moderation from acclaimed Australian journalist Rae Johnston. Beyond the daily applications of generative AI, they tackled the question: what could artificial intelligence mean at an evolutionary level for us, the human species?
Should we be afraid of superintelligence?
Toby Walsh is unfazed by superintelligence, asserting, “No one person knows how to build an iPhone. But collectively, we do.” For Walsh, our society, culture, and institutions exemplify superintelligence already “and mostly they do good things, like building Opera Houses.”
While increased reliance on AI might make us individually less sharp, on a larger scale it may make us collectively smarter. Walsh added that as the technology develops, it will further elevate our shared superintelligence, just as other tools humans have created throughout history have.
Highlighting the Sydney Opera House's innovative design and infamously challenging construction as a feat of superintelligence, Walsh questioned the potential of machines to design a similar marvel.
Sorry, but our brains are shrinking
Cue: wry smile from those of us who’ve had our suspicions for a while
Rob Brooks noted an intriguing trend: the human brain, which historically expanded quickly, started reducing in size between 13,000 to 5,000 years ago.
Theories like distributed cognition suggest that the decrease in our brain volumes could be due to the rise of collective culture and knowledge sharing, and the reduced need for each individual to hoard information for their survival.
AI's growing role in our day to day lives could redefine our cognitive landscape again, nudging our evolutionary trajectory in unexpected ways.
Consciousness and AI rights
The trio delved into AI consciousness, a topic Walsh said remains one of science's greatest mysteries even in humans. This quickly led to the question: if machines gain consciousness, will they have rights?
“First of all, how would we know? How would we trust them?” asked Walsh, noting that some AIs can already mimic human-like consciousness, before reflecting that humans tend to want to give rights to anything that has consciousness over time.
Brooks believes the evolving superintelligence between humans and machines could “help us figure out if there really is such a thing as consciousness.” That, or validate it as an "intellectual illusion created by us because we’re so darn reflective," as philosopher Dan Dennet says.
One of these intelligences is not like the other
Consider the octopus, mused Walsh.
These invertebrates, despite having a completely different brain structure to humans, display remarkable intelligence. Octopi can use tools, learn how to open jars, and are famous escape artists.
While people have a tendency for emphasising how machines attempt to mimic human-like behaviours—just as an octopus’ cognition varies from humans, AI's thought processes might be quite different to ours.
A deeper dive into humanity
AI isn't just a tool; it's a mirror reflecting some of humanity’s essence. As a result, it might usher in a deeper understanding of human nature than any other scientific endeavour has achieved so far.
“And I think it's really important that that ‘somebody’ is all of us, not just…the four big corporations who own all of your user data,” said Brooks as a closing remark, with Walsh voicing similar concerns, indicating we might already be on that trajectory.
AI: The Human Interface was more than just a talk—it was a reflection of society's hopes, fears, and fascinations with the ever-evolving world of machine learning.
About the speakers: Toby Walsh, AI professor at the University of New South Wales, has significantly advanced AI research, authoring multiple seminal books. Rob Brooks, a Scientia Professor of Evolution at UNSW, has penned award-winning literature, exploring diverse topics from digital intimacy to evolution's imprint on the modern world.
