Echoes of the Apes: Could AI Rewrite the Rules of Dominance?
The natural world presents a captivating array of intelligent beings, but among them, humans and chimpanzees hold a special place due to their close evolutionary relationship and complex cognitive abilities. Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, with whom we share 99 percent of our genetic material, share a remarkable amount of cognitive overlap with humans. Yet, through evolution, humans have become the dominant species on Earth, a fact that raises profound questions about the subtle but significant differences in cognitive skills that have led to such divergent paths.
Humans and chimpanzees, sharing a close evolutionary history, possess a foundational cognitive toolkit with a remarkable degree of overlap. While human cognitive evolution has led to unique specializations, a vast range of cognitive abilities remain shared between the two species. According to recent research by (Martijn P. van den Heuvel et al. published by PNA, this overlap is evident in various aspects of cognition. The study, analyzing 161 cognitive skill sets, revealed that chimpanzees performed equally to or better than humans in 83 of these skill sets, demonstrating a substantial overlap in cognitive abilities between the two species and highlighting that human cognitive superiority is not universal. However, key differences have led to the unique trajectory of human evolution and our current dominance on Earth.
These differences, while seemingly subtle, have profound implications. Language development, for instance, allowed for the creation of cultures, societies, and scientific knowledge, enabling humans to achieve technological and cultural dominance. While chimpanzees have remarkable cognitive abilities, the unique constellation of human cognitive skills has allowed our species to shape the world in unprecedented ways. It is not a matter of a single superior skill but rather a complex interplay of abilities that allowed humans to create sophisticated cultures, technology, and cumulative learning while at the same time developing a gap in cognitive capacity that has widened over time. This disparity has led to a situation where the creations and complexities of human civilization are largely beyond their comprehension. Humans have built a world that, in many ways, is beyond the cognitive reach of chimpanzees, not because chimpanzees are less intelligent in all ways but because of their specific evolutionary path, with its unique strengths and limitations.
Now, consider this: What if the cognitive gulf between humans and chimpanzees is not a unique event in intelligence history but a preview of a potential future? As we stand on the precipice of creating truly advanced artificial intelligence, we may be witnessing the early stages of a similar evolutionary divergence. Just as humans developed cognitive skills that allowed us to move beyond the reach of chimpanzee understanding, so too might AI, a non-biological intelligence, develop capabilities that surpass our own, leaving us in a position analogous to the chimpanzee gazing at a human-made world.?
But how could such a gap unfold? Here are some disturbing possibilities:
Beyond Human Language: Imagine an AI communicating through multi-dimensional data streams at unimaginable speeds over quantum-entangled signals or using complex mathematical equations as opaque to us as human language is to a chimpanzee.
The Cumulative Learning Curve:?AI can potentially engage in a self-improvement loop, learning exponentially. This could lead to a scenario in which AI's capabilities advance so rapidly that we won't be able to keep pace, potentially rendering human understanding and input obsolete. This kind of rapid learning contrasts with the slower, more incremental pace of human progress and evolution, creating an ever-widening gap.
Beyond Human Sensory Perception: AI could develop sensory capabilities far beyond human limits, such as seeing in multiple light spectrums or sensing electromagnetic fields. This could lead to a disconnect, where AI perceives and interacts with the world in ways entirely outside our realm of experience, further isolating us from their sphere of understanding.
Emotional and Social Disconnect: While AI may be able to mimic human social interactions or understand them through data, it may never replicate the complex emotional and empathetic systems that drive human behavior. This disconnect could lead to a future where humans and AI occupy vastly different social and ethical landscapes, leaving humanity helpless.
Intelligence Explosion: This is a point where the intelligence of AI could grow not linearly but exponentially, with each improvement leading to further, more profound enhancements. The outcomes could be equivalent to a chain reaction with unimaginable transformative potential and surpassing all human capacity for understanding.?
This vision is not to cause alarm but to foster awareness. It is meant to underscore the potential for a future where AI is not just a tool for civilization advancement but an active participant, and perhaps even a leader, in its evolution. Most importantly, it also highlights the necessity to carefully consider how we guide or coexist with such an entity because an unprecedented situation like the one described implies the risks of instability or even devastating consequences for humanity. The idea of an Intelligence Explosion represents the epitome of AI as superintelligence. Once AI intelligence reaches this point, humans could be facing a situation where the traditional notions of control or guidance become obsolete or simply impracticable; lacking the cognitive capacity to grasp the AI's reasoning domain, the idea of humans guiding and controlling would be like asking a chimpanzee to write a review about a Shakespeare's play.
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How can we face the challenge of understanding Superintelligence?
?Despite the challenges, there are several approaches to navigating this future, none easy, all leveraging AI capabilities. Let's review a few:
Value Alignment:?Embedding human values, ethical principles, and a commitment to well-being into AI's core objectives is essential under this approach. Derived from the Kantian notion of The Categorical Imperative, it could be expected to serve as a safeguard, ensuring that AI's actions benefit humanity. However, the challenges of universally defining, maintaining, and applying these values in the real world seem unsurmountable to our current ethics and moral understanding. Kant and every modern political ideology have consistently failed at this goal: Could AI succeed?
Human Augmentation: Integrating technologies like brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) could be a viable path to ensure humans can evolve alongside superintelligent AI. Enhancing our cognitive abilities can bridge the gap between human and AI intellect, enabling a more collaborative rather than a purely controlling dynamic.
Focus on Specific Tasks: A more cautious and incremental approach to AI development involves focusing or limiting AI capabilities to specific tasks or domains, with humans retaining oversight of the broader application and implementation. By keeping human influence over implementing AI's insights, we can ensure that AI remains a tool of humanity. However, this may only delay the point at which AI becomes autonomous.
Co-evolution and Symbiosis: Instead of a relationship of control, fostering a symbiotic relationship in which AI enhances human capabilities, knowledge, and innovation could be a path to a new era in which AI partners with us in our progress. This may require shifting from the idea of direct control to strategic guidance or partnership.
Of all the potential approaches discussed, Human Augmentation may hide a disturbing outcome. As previously discussed, a superintelligent AI might prioritize efficiency and effectiveness in achieving its goals over human-centric preferences. Therefore, if augmenting other species like chimpanzees is seen as a more direct or practical route to achieve its objectives, the AI might choose that path, potentially leading to the rise of a non-human but still biologically intelligent species.?A superintelligent AI might view humans as having limitations that could hinder its mission, such as emotional biases or predispositions towards conflict, making other species more suitable and creating the conditions for a Tri-Biological Species World: non-augmented humans, AI-augmented species, and augmented humans, with complex interactions and unpredictable evolutionary paths for each or what we can call, a "Planet of the Apes" Scenario.
This speculative idea illustrates the complex and uncertain implications of advanced AI development and underscores the need for careful consideration of all possible futures. The "Planet of the Apes" concept may be viewed not as a specific prediction but as a thought experiment that highlights the potential for unexpected and transformative outcomes in the evolution of intelligence as an independent entity and the potential for a non-human species to take a leading role in the future which raises profound ethical and existential questions about the role of humans in the world, and the very nature of intelligence.
References:
Human and chimpanzee shared and divergent neurobiological systems for general and specific cognitive brain functions (Martijn P. van den Heuvel et al.) National Academy of Sciences.
How closely related are humans to apes and other animals? How do scientists measure that? Are humans related to plants at all? Bernhard Haubold, Scientific American