We are currently in the Information Age.
I imagine there are many people here who don't remember the world before knowledge and easy-access to the internet exploded in the mid-1990s. I remember it though (born 27May1959). Sometimes I have a hard time imagining how I lived prior to that explosion. It was a different world. I would not want to go back there. The instant access we have to near the total sum of knowledge of human kind is just so freaking awesome!
I consider the rise of the internet to be the "black swan" event of my lifetime. It changed everything. So this is the Information Age.
The next age will involve artificial intelligence. That might well lead to extinction or it might lead to the transformation of humans into god-like beings. I couldn't hazard a guess at this point but I strongly suspect the age of artificial intelligence will make the transformation into the Information Age seem very trivial by comparison. Whatever you call it, the next age may be the one that establishes the turning point. Will an explosion of intelligence result in our extinction at the hands of our creations, an extinction at the hands of ourselves or a course correction on the path to near-godhood?
I won't attempt to answer that question but I think those are the stakes.
The next age is HUGE, whatever it is.
I imagine there are many people here who don't remember the world before knowledge and easy-access to the internet exploded in the mid-1990s. I remember it though (born 27May1959). Sometimes I have a hard time imagining how I lived prior to that explosion. It was a different world. I would not want to go back there. The instant access we have to near the total sum of knowledge of human kind is just so freaking awesome!
I consider the rise of the internet to be the "black swan" event of my lifetime. It changed everything. So this is the Information Age.
The next age will involve artificial intelligence. That might well lead to extinction or it might lead to the transformation of humans into god-like beings. I couldn't hazard a guess at this point but I strongly suspect the age of artificial intelligence will make the transformation into the Information Age seem very trivial by comparison. Whatever you call it, the next age may be the one that establishes the turning point. Will an explosion of intelligence result in our extinction at the hands of our creations, an extinction at the hands of ourselves or a course correction on the path to near-godhood?
I won't attempt to answer that question but I think those are the stakes.
The next age is HUGE, whatever it is.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
