Entire agreement with the organizations being smarter than people part. In terms of actually being able to steer the future into more favorable regions, I’d say that organizations are smarter than the vast majority of humans.
To use a specific example, my robotics team is immensely better at building robots than I am (or anyone else on the team is) on my own. Even if it messes up really really badly it’s still better at building a robot in the given constraints (budgetary constraints, 6 week time span) than I am.
I can see an argument being made that organizations don’t very efficiently turn raw computational power into optimization though.
Ima split up intelligence into optimizer (being able to more effectively reach a specified goal) and an inferencer (being able to process information to produce accurate models of reality).
There are weaknesses of the team as an inferencer. It seems to be (largely) unable to remember things beyond the extent that individuals involved with the team do, and all connecting of integration of information is ultimately done by individuals.
Though the organization does facilitate specialization of knowledge, and conversations cause ideas better than the ideas of an individual working alone, I don’t think its a fundamental shift. It seems to more be augmenting a human inferencer, and combining those results for better optimization, rather than a fundamental change in cognitive capability.
To illustrate, breakthroughs in science are certainly helped by universities, but I doubt that you can make breakthroughs significantly faster by combining all of the world’s universities into one well-organized super-university. There’s a limit to how brilliant people can be.
That being said, I’m pretty sure that the rate incremental change could be drastically improved by a combination like that.
Though the organization does facilitate specialization of knowledge, and conversations cause ideas better than the ideas of an individual working alone, I don’t think its a fundamental shift.
Maybe, if you discount the organization of “modern civilization.” There’s certainly a fundamental shift between self-reliant generalists and trading specialists. But is the difference between programmers in a small company and programmers working alone “fundamental”? Possibly not, though I’d probably call it that.
To illustrate, breakthroughs in science are certainly helped by universities, but I doubt that you can make breakthroughs significantly faster by combining all of the world’s universities into one well-organized super-university. There’s a limit to how brilliant people can be.
Actually, there’s some question about this. Having one flagship university where you put all the best people seems significantly better than spreading them out across the country/world. All the work that gets done at conferences could be the kind of work that gets done at a department’s weekly meeting. Part 4 of this essay suggests something similar.
Now, would it be best to have one super-university? Probably not- one of the main benefits of top universities is their selectivity. If you’re at Harvard, you probably have a much higher opinion of your colleagues than if you’re at a community college. It seems there are additional benefits to be gained from clustering, but there are decreasing returns to clustering (that become negative).
Maybe, if you discount the organization of “modern civilization.” There’s certainly a fundamental shift between self-reliant generalists and trading specialists. But is the difference between programmers in a small company and programmers working alone “fundamental”? Possibly not, though I’d probably call it that.
I avoided this example because I don’t have a particularly good goalset for modern civilization to cohesively work towards, so discussing optimization is sort of difficult.
In terms of optimization to my standards I agree that its a huge shift. I can get things from across the world shipped to my door, preprocessed for my consumption, at a ridiculously low cost.
But in terms of informational processing ability I feel like its not that gigantic of a deal. Like, it processes way more information but can’t do much beyond the capabilities of its constituent people to individual pieces of data, (like, eyeball a least squares regression line or properly calculate a posterior probability without using an outside algorithm to do so).
(Note: lots of fuzzy linguistic constructions in the previous two sentences. I notice some confusion.)
Now, would it be best to have one super-university? Probably not- one of the main benefits of top universities is their selectivity. If you’re at Harvard, you probably have a much higher opinion of your colleagues than if you’re at a community college. It seems there are additional benefits to be gained from clustering, but there are decreasing returns to clustering (that become negative).
I wasn’t being clear, sorry.
Concentrating your best people does help, but I don’t think you can get the equivalent of the best people by just clustering together enough people, no matter how good your structure is.
Concentrating your best people does help, but you can’t get the equivalent of the best people by just clustering together enough people.
Not sure about this either. It seems like a few good people can be as effective as a great person, and a few great people as effective as a fantastic person, especially when you’re looking for things that are broader (design an airplane) rather than deeper (design general relativity). It’s very possible we’ve hit saturation and so this isn’t as noticeable; the few great people aren’t competing against one fantastic person, but a few fantastic people.
I worded that too strongly.
You get diminishing returns on possible breakthroughs after a certain point. You get more effective smartness, but its not drastically better to the extent that a GAI is.
Entire agreement with the organizations being smarter than people part. In terms of actually being able to steer the future into more favorable regions, I’d say that organizations are smarter than the vast majority of humans.
To use a specific example, my robotics team is immensely better at building robots than I am (or anyone else on the team is) on my own. Even if it messes up really really badly it’s still better at building a robot in the given constraints (budgetary constraints, 6 week time span) than I am.
I can see an argument being made that organizations don’t very efficiently turn raw computational power into optimization though.
Ima split up intelligence into optimizer (being able to more effectively reach a specified goal) and an inferencer (being able to process information to produce accurate models of reality).
There are weaknesses of the team as an inferencer. It seems to be (largely) unable to remember things beyond the extent that individuals involved with the team do, and all connecting of integration of information is ultimately done by individuals.
Though the organization does facilitate specialization of knowledge, and conversations cause ideas better than the ideas of an individual working alone, I don’t think its a fundamental shift. It seems to more be augmenting a human inferencer, and combining those results for better optimization, rather than a fundamental change in cognitive capability.
To illustrate, breakthroughs in science are certainly helped by universities, but I doubt that you can make breakthroughs significantly faster by combining all of the world’s universities into one well-organized super-university. There’s a limit to how brilliant people can be.
That being said, I’m pretty sure that the rate incremental change could be drastically improved by a combination like that.
My 2 cents.
Maybe, if you discount the organization of “modern civilization.” There’s certainly a fundamental shift between self-reliant generalists and trading specialists. But is the difference between programmers in a small company and programmers working alone “fundamental”? Possibly not, though I’d probably call it that.
Actually, there’s some question about this. Having one flagship university where you put all the best people seems significantly better than spreading them out across the country/world. All the work that gets done at conferences could be the kind of work that gets done at a department’s weekly meeting. Part 4 of this essay suggests something similar.
Now, would it be best to have one super-university? Probably not- one of the main benefits of top universities is their selectivity. If you’re at Harvard, you probably have a much higher opinion of your colleagues than if you’re at a community college. It seems there are additional benefits to be gained from clustering, but there are decreasing returns to clustering (that become negative).
I avoided this example because I don’t have a particularly good goalset for modern civilization to cohesively work towards, so discussing optimization is sort of difficult.
In terms of optimization to my standards I agree that its a huge shift. I can get things from across the world shipped to my door, preprocessed for my consumption, at a ridiculously low cost. But in terms of informational processing ability I feel like its not that gigantic of a deal. Like, it processes way more information but can’t do much beyond the capabilities of its constituent people to individual pieces of data, (like, eyeball a least squares regression line or properly calculate a posterior probability without using an outside algorithm to do so). (Note: lots of fuzzy linguistic constructions in the previous two sentences. I notice some confusion.)
I wasn’t being clear, sorry. Concentrating your best people does help, but I don’t think you can get the equivalent of the best people by just clustering together enough people, no matter how good your structure is.
Not sure about this either. It seems like a few good people can be as effective as a great person, and a few great people as effective as a fantastic person, especially when you’re looking for things that are broader (design an airplane) rather than deeper (design general relativity). It’s very possible we’ve hit saturation and so this isn’t as noticeable; the few great people aren’t competing against one fantastic person, but a few fantastic people.
I worded that too strongly. You get diminishing returns on possible breakthroughs after a certain point. You get more effective smartness, but its not drastically better to the extent that a GAI is.