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Comment by throwaway143829 | Hacker News Reader

Makes you wonder what comes after AI. What's the "higher order" after AI that exists today or that will exist in 10 years? I'd guess we will never understand that level of intelligence, unless AI augments our brains somehow.

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Perhaps they’ll keep creating smaller transistors and more powerful processors eventually landing on a soft tissue-based version powered by glucose.

Even back in 2017, transistors were already smaller[0] and faster[1] than biological synapses to the same ratio by which wolves are smaller and faster than the hills they roam around on.

[0] Human synapse size / 2017-transistor size ≅ 1µm / 11nm ≅ wolf body length / a specific hill I was thinking of ≅ 1.6m / 145m [3]

[1] synaptic pulse rate / transistor transition rate ≅ 200 Hz / 30 GHz [2] ≅ 2 cm/year / 25 km/day ≅ speed of continental drift / average daily range of a wolf as a speed [3]

[2] transistors flip significantly faster than overall clock speed

[3] https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/you-wont-be...

> unless AI augments our brains somehow

Frankly, the more I think about AI, the less sense it makes to me that biological, single-body humans have any place in the future. As soon as we can digitize our minds, why wouldn't people begin to do so? Bodies could be inhabited at will, and death will be a thing of the past as we're able to store backups. I'm sure some will refuse and be left behind, just as we have Amish communities today, with a similar level of influence on civilization. And in the case of digital people, I think it's likely they'll share in the intellectual advancements of AI, if such a distinction even exists.

Once flying cars are as cheap and easy to own and operate as regular cars, why would anyone buy a non-flying car?

I think you're going to need to explain your position a little better.

Upload, like flying cars, is a particular vision of a scifi future technology which may not come to pass.

You're prognosticating a future "when X...", when that "when" is a very big "if".

Digitization is one direction but I think augmentation is perhaps a more likely one. Or a first one. Digitization can follow in a "Ship of Theseus" fashion.

And augmentation branches then in AI as symbiont versus AI as desktop assistant.

> Digitization is one direction but I think augmentation is perhaps a more likely one. Or a first one.

First seems likely, but as a permanent alternative I don't know why a species would eschew lightspeed transportation and effortless immortality for the fragility and slowness of an organic body. It's possible there are good reasons, but I don't know of any.

Digitization, upload, has always seemed to me an iffy goal. The brains' packaging doesn't seem very amenable to any of our current technologies, as far as being able to "read" it. And then once read emulating it seems just as difficult.

Once uploaded comes the issue of getting computing time to run it (the economics and politics of prefering run time of X over run time of Y). And maintaining the computing platform. Certainly there are immense advantages to the digitized form - of course.

By contrast, augmentation (which is what we already do) seems straightforward. And seems to fit current society "easily" (haha - or let's say it will be tough enough as a first stage.)

So that from the point of view of a next epoch in life forms, AI fits more immediately in the struggle of AI as symbiont, AI as independent, or AI as desktop assistant.

For something that would be closer to home for this audience, imagine having a backup of the brain of a Founder CEO to consult after they pass away.

If it was a faithful backup or simulation, it's not a stretch to realize we can can will let this being make decisions for the company.

You mean the second order toposophic level? https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/492d6fafbef2a

Careful you might be going down a 14 hour rabbit hole.

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