The Age Of Intelligence

Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the ‘movable type’ printing press in the 1400’s may be considered one of the greatest inventions in our modern era. In fact, the printing press is the very foundation for modernity, having given rise to movements such as the renaissance and the enlightenment, not to mention the scientific, protestant, and industrial revolutions.

Prior to the printing press, information was only available to a select few, but the printing press made ‘knowledge’ accessible, public and available to everyone.

This was the very beginning of the Information Age.

The internet in many ways is an extension to that. Information made available through paper, is now available on digital surface displays and devices everywhere. The internet has made adding, cataloging and retrieving information much easier and accessible to everyone with simply a tap of a button.

But we are on the brink of something much greater, to which the internet is only a preamble.

We are in the beginning of the Intelligence Age (Age of Intelligence).

What exactly is the Intelligence Age?
It is machines talking to machines, algorithms talking to servers, processes triggered by events and sensors, autonomous interactions, and deep learning.

One example of an event in the Intelligence Age, is the self driving car that is communicating within it’s surroundings. The car interacts with other vehicles and objects on the road, all the while receiving and sending GPS data for the specific task of defining and routing the most efficient path from point A to point B.

in other words, the Intelligence Age can be categorized as not simply everything connected (internet of things), but everything in conversation.

It’s important to note that Intelligence is not simply how we understand human intelligence, but there are multiple forms of intelligences. As Kevin Kelly states in his article titled “The Myth of A Superhuman AI”

“Intelligence is not a single dimension. It is a complex of many types and modes of cognition, each one a continuum.”
- Kevin Kelly

Some forms of intelligence include deduction, induction, symbolic reasoning, emotional intelligence, spacial logic, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

As Kelly points out, these suites of cognition vary between individuals and between species. A squirrel can remember the exact location of several thousand acorns for years. So in that cognitive sense, a squirrel is far superior than a human.

The natural evolution of species looks more like a disk radiating outward like this, devised by David Hillis at the University of Texas and based on DNA.

Therefore when we think of Artificial Intelligence, we must not simply equate it to human intelligence, but rather as another form of evolving intelligence. We really are not sure what that looks like in the future, which is why the concern raised by some leading tech scientists is really about losing control of ‘knowledge’, hence theories of the AI takeover.

The Intelligence Age however, is not about a single exponential growth of intelligence, a kind of superhuman AI, but as Kelly states, more akin to a Cambrian explosion of multiplicities. A variety of finite intelligences, working in unfamiliar dimensions, exceeding our thinking in many of them, working together with us in time to solve existing problems and create new problems.

The Intelligence Age will bring many challenges to our new world, but it will also bring many new possibilities. We are co-partners with advancing intelligences so we have the opportunity now, to shape and guide that future.

“No invention before will match its power to change our world, and by century’s end AI will touch and remake everything in our lives.”
- Kevin Kelly