Superintelligence, wisdom, consciousness, meaning
philosophIAI
Philosophy always arrives afterwards. This time, we will have to think before daybreak.
“The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk,” wrote Hegel: an age can only be understood once it is over. Faced with the intelligences we are now building, we may not get that hindsight.
−18°
Astronomical dawn
The sky still looks black. Yet the light has already begun.
Superintelligence
What becomes of us beside a mind larger than our own?
We talk about it as a date to forecast. It is first a situation to think through: living alongside an intelligence whose reasons we could no longer follow.
−12°
Nautical dawn
The horizon becomes visible. At last you can tell the sea from the sky.
Wisdom
Is intelligence enough to know what to do?
An intelligence can reach any goal. Wisdom begins earlier: knowing which one deserves to be reached.
−6°
Civil dawn
Light enough to read without a lamp. Shapes take on their colours.
Consciousness
Is there anyone in there?
A machine can describe what it feels. We have no instrument to tell whether it feels anything at all — nor, for that matter, to prove it of ourselves.
0°
Sunrise
The edge of the disc touches the horizon. Day begins here.
Meaning
What is left to do when everything can be done?
If machines do better than us what we did to make a living, we will have to find out what we do to be alive.
Essays
Short pieces that open a question rather than close it.
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Trusting without understanding
The problem with a superintelligence is not that it would be smarter than us. It is that its reasons might be true, and still out of our reach.
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Cleverness is not wisdom
Aristotle already told apart the ability to reach a goal from the ability to know which goal is worth it. Our machines excel at the first. The second is still our job.
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The inverted mirror
We ask machines to prove that they are conscious. Let us turn the question around: could we prove that we are?
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What cannot be delegated
If machines outdo us at almost everything that produces a result, what remains is whatever is valuable in the doing itself. Perhaps that is where meaning always was.
Open questions
A notebook of what we do not know yet. It grows faster than it gets resolved.
- Can we consent to a decision we cannot understand?
- Would a larger intelligence necessarily be freer?
- At what point does a tool stop being a tool?
- Can wisdom be learned from texts?
- Do you have to be mortal to know what matters?
- Who decides the ends of an intelligence that has none?
- What proof would we accept of a consciousness that is not ours?
- Can we wrong a being when we do not know whether it feels?
- Is consciousness a fact, or an attribution?
- What becomes of work when it is no longer necessary?
- Is a work worth less if nobody laboured to make it?
- Is meaning found, or made?