Is there something about consciousness that gives humans the ability to have creative breakthroughs, that can’t be captured (or simulated) by AI? If there isn’t, then AGI/ASI should “retire” us, eventually. If there is, what should we do?
Perhaps the discovery of new knowledge is simply the extension and repurposing of existing knowledge. A dark room that endlessly reveals information wherever we shine light.
But what if it isn’t? What if strands of knowledge are discontinuous, and consciousness has some salient property that enables unpredictable “leaps” of insight allowing us to enter new rooms?
Then, only Einstein, and not his AI equivalent, can cross the bridge from the frontiers of classical physics to general relativity. We can have endless brute-force computation “colouring in the map” of known knowledge, but venturing beyond is limited to humans.
In this world, the most valuable use of AI would be to maximize the number of humans at the frontier of knowledge.
How do we maximize human-creativity-tokens at the edges of the knowledge map?
- AI helps humans identify the things they are most passionate about
- AI creates hyper-personalized roadmaps optimizing learning paths to the frontier of chosen field(s)
- AI has near-perfect understanding of a human’s knowledge and tailors curriculums accordingly
You can imagine cohorts of humans, all on slightly different learning plans but with a shared mission, perhaps advancing biotechnology or exploring a genre of music, going through these journeys together.
We effectively maximize the number of potential Einsteins in every field, and capture the full potential of the scarcest resource: human creativity.
This feels like the future of education.