Daniel Knecht

Working on building Artificial Intelligence seems all the rave these days. We build and leverage these systems to do our most basic thinking, believing unequivocally that it will displace the job market and help humanity engage in more meaningful activities. Without a doubt, automation is an important factor in enabling the cultivation of higher value output, but drive, innovation, and self-actualization are fundamental to a life that is full of meaning and fulfillment. There is a great problem with outsourcing human intellect by raising AI to great and all-powerful pedastools. Rendering them into God-like status that no mind could ever compete with.

What if… our own intelligence is untapped. What if we are so nascent in the evolution of the brain that we haven’t even begun to realize what we can actually grow in terms of the potential of the mind. Take for example the extraordinary ability of savants like Kim Peek who could read two pages at once in seconds with near 100% perfect recall of every word and phrase. Our brains evolved with highly complex structures that have enabled us to understand the nature of reality, observe quantum phenomena, build particle colliders, discover nuclear fusion, and launch people into space and land on the moon. Many of these discoveries occurred thanks to the genius of only a fraction of people who embarked on difficult journeys of introspection, intense study, and prolific writing.

The potential of our own intelligence is largely untapped by the masses. Savant-like abilities are possible when we dare to explore the unlocked fields of the subconscious and learn how to wield our own neural-networks. Nikola Tesla was able to build models in his mind’s eye so vividly, they were undistinguishable from real objects around him – I imagine how trivial and unremarkable he would find current AI systems compared to his own imagination. AI superintelligence becomes laughable when human superintelligence is taken to its ultimate expression – which is as infinite as the known and observable universe of 100-200 billion galaxies. There is a force of nature that allows us to evolve the brain because we are tapped into a universal mind. AI will forever be an isolated node, untethered to this greater power. There is a claim that Artificial Superintelligence will solve all the world’s problems. Given how few people already attempt develop their own superintelligence – we are investing in an unknown, unproven, and largely unpredictable dystopian future, when there is much better bet right between our ears that has been shown to actually solve real-world problems.

Regardless of what big corporations try to force-feed us; there has been no better time in history to double down on unlocking and growing our own faculties and genius.