Re: Floppy take-off

From: Jimmy Wales (jwales@bomis.com)
Date: Wed Aug 01 2001 - 12:22:50 MDT


Joaquim Almgren Gāndara wrote:
> I don't quite understand this. Why place the threshold at 1.0? What
> evidence is there indicating that the average human (plus AI
> advantages such as codic cortex) is smart enough to progress to higher
> levels of intelligence? Why not someone half as smart (0.5) or 1.5 or
> 7.0 or any other arbitrary number? I think you're being
> antropocentric.

I think the point is that if we could build a single human-equivalent, and
let's say equivalent to the average scientist, so that's probably 1.1 as
compared to the average, then we can just get busy and build a few million
of them, thus increasing the total brainpower devoted to science by a very
large margin. With AI advantages such as codic cortex, high speed interactions
with each other (perhaps to such a degree that really we wouldn't naturally
think of them as a 1,000,000 scientist-equivalents, but as a single supermind),
and so on, they'd get there.

One of the distinctions that Gordon Worley raised, and that I've been harping
on as well, is that "0.5" humans can mean either "just as smart as a human, but
running at half speed" or it can mean "half as smart as a human".

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