Okay, premise that AI really is 'intelligent' up to the point of business decisions.
So, this all then implies that 'intelligence' is then a commodity too?
Like, I'm trying to drive at that your's, mine, all of our 'intelligence' is now no longer a trait that I hold, but a thing to be used, at least as far as the economy is concerned.
We did this with muscles and memory previously. We invented writing and so those with really good memories became just like everyone else. Then we did it with muscles and the industrial revolution, and so really strong or endurant people became just like everyone else. Yes, many exceptions here, but they mostly prove the rule, I think.
Now it seems that really smart people we've made AI and so they're going to be like everyone else?
The way this thing "looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck" has nothing to do with the way a real duck "looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck".
Who cares, as long as the end results are close (or close enough for the uses they are put to)?
Besides, "has nothing to do with how the human brain works" is an overstatement.
"The term “predictive brain” depicts one of the most relevant concepts in cognitive neuroscience which emphasizes the importance of “looking into the future”, namely prediction, preparation, anticipation, prospection or expectations in various cognitive domains. Analogously, it has been suggested that predictive processing represents one of the fundamental principles of neural computations and that errors of prediction may be crucial for driving neural and cognitive processes as well as behavior."
But the end results aren’t actually close. That is why frontier LLMs don’t know you need to drive your car to the car wash (until they are inevitably fine-tuned on this specific failure mode). I don’t think there is much true generalization happening with these models - more a game of whack-a-mole all the way down.
Neither does a pneumatic piston operate at all like a bicep nor does an accounting book operate at all like a hippocampus. But both have taken well enough of the load off both those tissues that you be crazy to use the biological specimen for 99% of the commercial applications.
A bicep and a piston both push and pull things, but an AI cannot do what a smart brain can, so I don’t think being smart will no longer have an advantage. I mean, someone has to prompt the AI after all. The mental ability to understand and direct them will be more important if anything.
Have you worked with the Claude agents a lot? They essentially prompt themselves! It's crazy.
My meaning is not so much that intelligence will go away as a useful trait to individuals. But more that it's utility to the economy will be a commodity, with grades and costs and functions. But again , I'm speculating out of my ass here.
In that, if you want cheap enough intelligence or expensive and good intelligence, you can just trade and sell and buy whatever you want. Really good stuff will be really expensive of course.
Like, you still need to learn to write and have that discipline to use writing in lieu of memory. And you still need to repair and build machines in lieu of muscles and have those skills. Similarly I think that you'll still need the skills to use AI and commoditized intelligence, whatever those are. Empathy maybe?
>So, this all then implies that 'intelligence' is then a commodity too? Like, I'm trying to drive at that your's, mine, all of our 'intelligence' is now no longer a trait that I hold, but a thing to be used, at least as far as the economy is concerned.
This is obviously already the case with the intelligence level required to produce blog posts and article slop, generade coding agent quality code, do mid-level translations, and things like that...
Just want to note something there:
Okay, premise that AI really is 'intelligent' up to the point of business decisions.
So, this all then implies that 'intelligence' is then a commodity too?
Like, I'm trying to drive at that your's, mine, all of our 'intelligence' is now no longer a trait that I hold, but a thing to be used, at least as far as the economy is concerned.
We did this with muscles and memory previously. We invented writing and so those with really good memories became just like everyone else. Then we did it with muscles and the industrial revolution, and so really strong or endurant people became just like everyone else. Yes, many exceptions here, but they mostly prove the rule, I think.
Now it seems that really smart people we've made AI and so they're going to be like everyone else?