The Cognitive Future We Are Building
We live in the knowledge economy and this economy is under significant threat from AI.
The article will discuss the following:
- A brief history of our story: How our evolution changed the valuing of certain attributes during the course of history.
- The problem with IQ: the rate at which machines are advancing is for more greater than the growth of our own intelligence.
- IQs are not created equal: Those with more money have higher IQs because of a better socio-economic status.
- The death of IQ and an equalisation of cognitive ability: Our last innovation will be to merge with a superior intelligence.
A brief story of our history
We begin in the forests, at the inception of life as we know it where back then the most valuable attribute was strength, simply put if you were stronger or were able to carry a heavy load further and faster you were amongst the most valuable members of society. But we were different from other animals we had a brain that strangely gave us more intelligence we are able to learn faster and at higher complexities and adapt quickly. From the beginning our brains start building what we know today as the knowledge economy. Gradually across time we built houses, sparked fire the electricity, some more technology, the internet and eventually the 21st century arrived. Our evolutions have allowed us to realise that strength nor fitness is no longer a vital attribute in terms of achieving broader success in our society. The industrial revolution was the first sign of how technology could replace us but at the time it was only perceived the realm of strength and work product no emphasis was place on the impeding doom of how machines would one day take over intelligence demanding tasks. The intelligence frontier it could be argued was the only frontier to which humans had dominance in to not have that would mean as a species we have no advantage upon which we can thrive on.
The problem with IQ: Not increasing fast enough
The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallised intelligence test scores. When intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are initially standardised using a sample of test-takers, by convention the average of the test results is set to 100 and their standard deviation is set to 15 or 16 IQ points. When IQ tests are revised, they are again standardised using a new sample of test-takers, usually born more recently than the first. Again, the average result is set to 100. However, when the new test subjects take the older tests, in almost every case their average scores are significantly above 100. Test score increases have been continuous and approximately linear from the earliest years of testing to the present. For the Raven’s Progressive Matrices test, a study published in the year 2009 found that British children’s average scores rose by 14 IQ points from 1942 to 2008. Similar gains have been observed in many other countries in which IQ testing has long been widely used, including other Western European countries, Japan, and South Korea.(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect).
Throughout the progression of time human intelligence has been on the rise this evident with increasingly rapid development of the world around us as we increase our average IQ’s collective we are able to archive more than was ever possible at any point prior to the present. The difference between today and our future compared to the past is that we did not really have anything that we had to compete with on an intelligence scale hence the gain in our IQs was just a further profession into development with each generational increase serving to move us away from all the other creatures on earth, separating the homo sapiens from else. But this all changed at the advent of Artificial intelligence and especially the realisation of the creation of the first neural network by Frank Rosenblatt which changed everything. For the very first time in our history the homo sapiens had created something who’s intelligence could surpass its own it now had competition and arguably and even more important reason to rapidly increase its IQ. But the Flynn effect tells us that takes us about 50 years to achieve a 14 point increase in IQ in the same period computes aided by artificial intelligence went from playing checkers and chess to literally driving cars un-aided. If this rate of progression increases as it will be probably do humans are in serious trouble and could possibly face a future in which they are not in control worst case scenario the AI could be programmed to save the world and upon analysis realise that the biggest threat to the world is us — Humans, and it would just proceed to kill every human being on earth to complete its task thereby saving the world.
IQs are not created equal
The lowest recorded IQ scores are found in sub-Saharan African countries such as Somalia (68), Sudan (71), and Ethiopia (69).
While this a highly controversial issue there is evidence that suggest that developed increases as a consequence of their wealth have higher IQs than developing countries. The same trend is observed when comparing the IQ test scores of kids from poor socio-economic background as compared to their wealthier counterparts.
This study showed that children from lower socio-economic status(SES) backgrounds tend to perform on average worse on intelligence tests than children from more privileged homes as early as at the age of 2 years. Furthermore, SES accentuated these differences throughout childhood and adolescence: the 6-point IQ difference in infancy between children from low and high SES homes almost tripled by the time the children were 16 years old. Our findings confirm changes in intelligence throughout early life and suggest a meaningful relationship between IQ growth and socio-economic factors.(source:https://bit.ly/3jVdeMv)
IQ and the Wealth of Nations is a 2002 book in which the authors’ calculation of average IQ scores for 60 countries, based on their analysis of published reports is discussed. It reports their observation that national IQ correlates with gross domestic product per capita at 0.82, and with the rate of economic growth from 1950–1990 at 0.64. The authors believe that average IQ differences between nations are due to both genetic and environmental factors. They also believe that low GDP can cause low IQ, just as low IQ can cause low GDP. (Source:https://bit.ly/2X9GFRf)
This is a very serious problem because those who need an intelligence advantage are those who are at an intelligence disadvantage and this is further exacerbating the problem of inequality.
The death of IQ and an equalisation of cognitive ability
Cruel is the irony that our own creation might spell the end of our existence as we know it. There is still time to stop what science fiction is obsessed with proving is inevitable, it is clear now that we cannot stop nor contain innovation but we can make one last major innovation to save ourselves. We shall for the very first time in our own history attempt to merge and live in a symbiosis with something that was otherwise foreign. The problem is not merely only to do with our brains but the very limited and inefficient input and output methods that we have created in order to interface with one another, machines and the world at large. Imagine then a brain to brain or brain to machine interface — essentially you think it and it happens. By using electrodes that can transmit electrical signals just as our brain do, this can stimulate our brains to do things beyond a magnitude of which we cannot yet conceive of, further accelerating our development. It will not keep us on par with the AI but the AI will become us and we will become the AI — a merged existence. We can essentially have all the knowledge accumulated throughout human history downloaded into brains within an instant and have it all at our disposal. With enough training and adaptation we will be able to control our “thought to execution” abilities the same way we are able to control where our eyes look. You will be able to program new software and capabilities into your own brain and also update it with new knowledge or frameworks of thinking. In this new way of life intelligence is less of an issue as it is in our present day and what an individual can be capable of doing is truly equally as limitless as the next individual. We would have created a post intelligence world, where intelligence as a construct might not matter anymore and perhaps more exciting is the possibilities of a world with completely democratised intelligence.
