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Comment by idle_zealot | Hacker News Reader

I'm all for advancing human understanding, even if it might lag behind machine understanding, but there is a way to have machines prove they understand something we don't: ask them to build something functional that we can't. If your hypothetical future comes to pass, and we ask the machine to build a cancer-curing healing ray, and it works, I'd say that's its own win. Then we can spend however long it takes trying to understand how it works. It's depressing and disempowering in a way, but I think overall I'd be happy with that future.

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I once visited a town in Spain over which an ancient Roman aqueduct runs, elevated above most of the buildings, even today. It carried an essential ingredient foundational to life in the area, but after the fall of the Empire and the deaths of the architects and engineers who could understand it, the aqueduct stood in the midst of people who could not have repaired it. Relying on mission-critical technology divorced from human understanding is exceptionally risky. Obviously, people have done it before and will happen again, but it makes me nervous.

I don't think the aqueducts were beyond the understanding of those who came after the romans. But the romans were extremely organised and could cooperate.

Chess has already been this way: computers are far better than humans, yet the humans still play and learn/understand new position evaluations from the computers.

You’re spot on here by analogy.

There also will never be a Mikhail Tal type of player again and most classical matches at the highest level are just draws now. I'm not sure if you could say AI is a benefit for the highest level but it is an equaliser in the sense that you don't need to pay for a tutor to analyse your mistakes (though they can still be helpful) which helps the average player. Chess is also predominantly for entertainment making it not the best example for AI not replacing people.

> Then we can spend however long it takes trying to understand how it works.

...unfortunately it took 57 years to unravel, but the cryptic exploit resulting in our telomeres suddenly expiring took a mere 42.

Why not live in a cage then and have the zookeeper deal with catering to begin with?

The state you proclaim to be happy with is one of irresponsible dependency. A retreat to self-infantilization.

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