A more interesting upside of AI

I expect rapid progress but not towards general superintelligence

I’ve often been surprised when I hear from top researchers in industry that they think AI will be better than them at their job in a few years, and I didn’t really know why I doubted it.

AI Is Evolving — And Changing Our Understanding Of Intelligence

Advances in AI are making us reconsider what intelligence is and giving us clues to unlocking AI’s full potential.

Agentic AI and the next intelligence explosion

For decades, the artificial intelligence (AI) “singularity” has been heralded as a single, titanic mind bootstrapping itself to godlike intelligence, consolidating all cognition into a cold silicon point. But this vision is almost certainly wrong in its most fundamental assumption. If AI development follows the path of previous major evolutionary transitions or “intelligence explosions,” our current step-change in computational intelligence will be plural, social, and deeply entangled with its forebears (us!).

Michael I. Jordan on AI: “Superintelligence is science fiction”

The Age of Wonders and Terrors

Twenty years ago, when the idea of AI taking over the world in our lifetimes still struck most of us as the unconstrained fantasy of those who knew too much science fiction and too little science, …

Are We Betting on the Wrong Kind of Intelligence?

AI optimizes for the world as it was. Rewilding could be what prepares us for the world as it is.

Intelligence Rising

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to be one of the most transformative technologies in human history. 

Building Political Superintelligence

Amidst fears of dystopia, a blueprint for how we use AI to reinvent the way we govern ourselves

What AI is Really For - Christopher Butler

After three years of immersion in AI, I have come to a relatively simple conclusion: it’s a useful technology that is very likely overhyped to the

Will AI spark a scientific renaissance — or a diffuse monoculture?

Artificial intelligence’s ability to enrich science will depend not only on model capability, but also on whether researchers, reviewers and funders reward originality over speed.

The AI We Deserve

Critiques of artificial intelligence abound. Where’s the utopian vision for what it could be?

AI That Evolves in the Wild | Edge.org

I’m interested not in domesticated AI—the stuff that people are trying to sell. I'm interested in wild AI—AI that evolves in the wild. I’m a naturalist, so that’s the interesting thing to me. Thirty-four years ago there was a meeting just like this in which Stanislaw Ulam said to everybody in the room—they’re all mathematicians—"What makes you so sure that mathematical logic corresponds to the way we think?" It’s a higher-level symptom. It’s not how the brain works. All those guys knew fully well that the brain was not fundamentally logical.

The Thoughts The Civilized Keep

The hype around a new AI language generator reveals the sterility of mainstream thinking on AI today — and indeed on how we think about thinking itself.

Jacob Coxon Warns of Human Extinction and Triggers a Preference Cascade

CEOs of major AI labs, and employees of major AI labs, including OpenAI and Anthropic, often say they plan to build superintelligence soon, as in within a few years create AIs that are superior to humans at essentially all cognitive tasks.