Template:M intro technology rumours of our demise: Difference between revisions

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About that “[[division of labour]]”. When it comes to mechanical tasks, machines — especially [[Turing machine]]s — scale very well, while humans scale very badly. “Scaling” when we are talking about computational tasks means doing them over and over again, in series or parallel, quickly and accurately. Each operation can be identical; their combined effect astronomical. Of course machines are good at this: this is why we build them. They are digital: they preserve information indefinitely, however many processors we use, with almost no loss of fidelity.
About that “[[division of labour]]”. When it comes to mechanical tasks, machines — especially [[Turing machine]]s — scale very well, while humans scale very badly. “Scaling” when we are talking about computational tasks means doing them over and over again, in series or parallel, quickly and accurately. Each operation can be identical; their combined effect astronomical. Of course machines are good at this: this is why we build them. They are digital: they preserve information indefinitely, however many processors we use, with almost no loss of fidelity.


You could try to use networked humans to replicate a Turing machine, but the results would be disappointing and the humans would not enjoy it. Humans are slow and analogue. With each touch they ''degrade'' information (or ''augment'' it, depending on how you feel about it). The [[signal-to-noise ratio]] would quickly degrade. (This is the premise for the parlour game “Chinese Whispers” — each repetition changes the signal. A game of Chinese Whispers among a group of Turing machines would be no fun at all.)  
You could try to use networked humans to replicate a [[Turing machine]], but the results would be slow , costly and disappointing and the humans would not enjoy it.<ref>{{author|Cixin Liu}} runs exactly this thought experiment in his ''Three Body Problem'' trilogy.</ref> Humans are slow and analogue. With each touch they ''degrade'' information or ''augment'' it, depending on how you feel about it. The [[signal-to-noise ratio]] would quickly degrade: this is the premise for the parlour game “Chinese Whispers” — with each repetition the signal degrades, with amusing consequences. A game of Chinese Whispers among a group of [[Turing machine]]s would make for a grim evening.)  


In any case, you could not assign a human, or any number of humans, the task of “catalogue the entire output of human creative output”. With a machine, at least in concept, you could.<ref>Though this is sometime misleading, as I discovered when trying to find the etymology of the word “[[satisfice]]”. Its modern usage was coined by Herbert Simon in a paper in 1956, but the ngram suggests its usage began to tick up in the late 1940s. On further examination the records transpire to be mistranslations caused by optical character recognition errors. So there is a large part of the human oeuvre —the pre-digital bit that has had be digitised—that does suffer from analogue copy errors.</ref>
In any case, you could not assign a human, or any number of humans, the task of “cataloguing the entire canon of human creative output”: this is quite beyond their theoretical, never mind practical, ability. With a machine, at least in concept, you could.<ref>Though the infinite fidelity of machines is overstated, as I discovered when trying to find the etymology of the word “[[satisfice]]”. Its modern usage was coined by Herbert Simon in a paper in 1956, but the Google ngram suggests its usage began to tick up in the late 1940s. On further examination, the records transpire to be optical character recognition errors. So there is a large part of the human oeuvre — the pre-digital bit that has had be digitised— that does suffer from analogue copy errors.</ref>


But when it comes to imaginative uses of information we associate with the mind, humans scale magnificently. Here what we look for in “scaling” is very different. We don’t want identical, digital, high-fidelity duplication. Ten thousand copies of ''Finnegans Wake'' contribute no more to the human canon than does one.<ref>Or possibly, even ''none'': wikipedia tells us that, “due to its linguistic experiments, stream of consciousness writing style, literary allusions, free dream associations, and abandonment of narrative conventions, ''Finnegans Wake'' has been agreed to be a work largely unread by the general public.”</ref> Multiple humans contribute precisely that difference in perspective: a complex community of readers can, independently parse, analyse, explain, narratise, extend, criticise, extrapolate, filter, amend, correct, and improvise the information and each others’ reactions to it. This community of expertise is what [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] overlooks in his dismissal of Shakespeare’s “[[Bayesian prior|Bayesian priors]]” creates its own intellectual energy and momentum. No matter how fast it pattern-matches in parallel processes, artificial intelligence can’t do this.
No surprise: human minds scale badly at “body stuff”. But when it comes to “mind stuff,” they scale magnificently. Here, what we look for in “scaling” is different. We don’t want identical, digital, high-fidelity ''duplication'': ten thousand copies of ''Finnegans Wake'' contribute no more to the human canon than does one.<ref>Or possibly, even ''none'': Wikipedia tells us that, “due to its linguistic experiments, stream of consciousness writing style, literary allusions, free dream associations, and abandonment of narrative conventions, ''Finnegans Wake'' has been agreed to be a work largely unread by the general public.”</ref> Multiple humans doing  “mind stuff” contribute precisely that variability, difference in perspective that generates the wisdom — or brutality — of crowds: a complex community of readers can independently parse, analyse, explain, narratise, extend, criticise, extrapolate, filter, amend, correct, and improvise the information ''and each others’ reactions to it''. The crowd shapes itself: human consensus has a directed intelligence all of its own. This community of expertise is what [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] overlooks in his dismissal of Shakespeare’s “[[Bayesian prior|Bayesian priors]]”. Shakespeare’s own contribution to the canon — the folio — is finite, small, was completed in 1603 and has not been changed since. The rest of the body of work,l we think of as “Shakespeare” — the interpretations, editions, performances, literary criticisms, essays, adaptations and its (and their) infusion into the vernacular, vastly outstrips  the folio, and grows and adapts to this day. “Mind scaling” creates its own intellectual energy and momentum. No matter how fast pattern-matching machines running in parallel, however much brute, replicating horsepower you throw at the task, artificial intelligence, without human steering, can’t do any of this.
 
(The “directed intelligence of human consensus” is not [[utopia|magically benign]], of course, as [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] might be able to tell us, having been on both ends of it).<ref>See also Lindy Chamberlain, Peter Ellis and Barry George.</ref>


===A real challenger bank===
===A real challenger bank===