# What does it mean to be human? Humans are [Universal Explainers](Universal%20Explainer.md) with a capacity to understand the world, explain it, and improve our understanding indefinitely. Humans are [creative](Creativity%20MOC.md). Humans do not just adapt to their environment, but we transform it through knowledge creation. For Deutsch, being human means engaging in the constant process of problem-solving, which includes the capacity to create new explanations and solutions beyond the immediate scope of survival or reproduction. Deutsch also ties this idea to freedom, as our ability to create knowledge allows us to improve conditions, challenge existing limitations, and explore new frontiers, whether in science, technology, or moral philosophy. Being human, in his words, is tied to an ongoing process of seeking better explanations and advancing human progress. Humans solve problems, creating ever better problems. They do this via creativity. They can reason and think for themselves, integrating knowledge from elsewhere. ## Archive ### His philosophy 1. North star 1. Goal of human flourishing (strong agree) 2. discovering and developing your unique gifts 3. need AI and it's governance to serve humans 1. If we had a genuine AI, we wouldn't want to make it a *slave* - we would want them to be convinced to help us 2. Compass 1. Human autonomy 1. state of being free in mind, interactions 2. reason 1. super power we use when when our mind searches for alternatives 2. lack of reason will cause science to stall 3. decentralization 1. need to keep decentralization to keep from converging to a single opinion 3. Navigating new world 1. philosophy to code 2. human centered AI lab at oxford ### Notes from talk that I should think about how to respond to * "AI is forcing us to ask the question - what does it mean for us to be human?" * * **"Copernicus dislodged us from our central position in the cosmos. Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution situated us among the animals. And Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity revealed the limits of our senses and bare intuition. And now in the age of Turing, technology pushes us to philosophy once again"** * This screams of arguments in DDs book * I think his point is just that certain things can push us towards philosophy and epistemology - which I would agree with * But I would say that each of the above bullets *emphasizes* the significance of humans and their strengths - namely that they are [Universal Explainers](Universal%20Explainer.md) who are not limited via their senses. * From the least parochial view perspective available to us, *people* are the most significant entities in the cosmic scheme of things. They are not ‘supported’ by their environments, but support themselves by creating knowledge. Once they have suitable knowledge (essentially, the know- ledge of the Enlightenment), they are capable of sparking unlimited further progress. * Chapter 3, the Spark - TODO: Bring in example around needing to understand humans in order to make predictions about physics * **"Today we are creating technology in AI that has the potential to shape both the means and the ends of human endeavor. The printing press never determined what was printed. But today 20% of human discretionary time is mediated by algorithms that do determine what information is consumed and even how we decide what is good for us"** * I think this is a weak argument. We have always had what we think mediated by certain things. For instance, in 1850 the paper certainly updated the stories they posted based on feedback such as sales. * However, it is worth thinking about where this could lead - consider "Fall" by NS. There he describes different "editors" that people have and how different that can lead a population to divide. They may stop having a coherent world view, one that * A key response: what would hurt our society is if we suddenly stopped: * Open ended problem solving * Principle of Optimism, belief in solving problems * Tradition of Criticism (so if suddenly no one shares a coherent world view, this could lead to criticism being impossible) * Error correction * **"What happens when the technology evolves from a tool to an overseer. What happens when it starts to substitute for our most essential human capacities?"** * There is the question of *will* it evolve in this way. Of that I don't believe so - I believe that that stems from a pessimistic world view. * But then their is the question of *if* it did evolve that way, what would we do? * TODO: Think about this more * **"One risk is that we offload key parts of our human existence to a super intelligent school master"** * I don't agree that a "super intelligent" school master will exists * However, I don't think I need to accept that argument to agree with the premise that technology is causing humans to offload key parts of their existence already * **"How do we realize the benefits of AI, while protecting freedom?"** * Agree and like this * * Evolution from tool to overseer * Go in with * good arguments about creativity * calculator example * If an AI was made, it would be necessity be a universal explainer, and hence we could convince it to take out values * I'm not an AI pessimist * I would say I'm an accelerationist * there is not way to pass the baton to AI * universal explainer * humanistic vision of AI * Knowledge creation - problem solving - requires two things: creativity and criticism. * So why not just program a computer with that? We can't - because we do not know how. Creating new solutions to problems is a creative act. And we cannot express that creative act as an algorithm. If we could - we would. We would program a computer to be creative and then it would create knowledge - it would learn. But no computer has ever created a new _explanation_. And that there is the nub of it. Not only has it never done such a thing, no computer has even come close to creating explanatory knowledge. And it is the _creation of explanatory knowledge_ that is the hallmark of human intelligence. Nothing else. Humans are universal knowledge creators. But they need not be this into the future. But understanding why they are unique, at the moment, is key to programming a computer with human-like intelligence. * As Einstein quipped "My pen and I are more intelligent than I". He meant that extra hardware helps him (i.e: a pen) and these days we have trillions of times more assistance than Einstein did...if only we put in the effort when we want to solve certain problems. Learning is something we do. We just are not entirely clear how we do it. We know it has something to do with criticism and creativity as I have said - but finer details elude us. * Fall by Neil Stephenson * Coherent world view is crucial * * To solve this problem requires a new philosophy which is an improvement upon our best philosophy. It is a philosophy of how learning actually works in fine grained detail. So fine we can write down a step-by-step method that can be instantiated in code. But philosophy is not valued by the majority of people working on the AGI issue. * Being human is about solving problems and creating new explanations * In my opinion what makes us uniquely human: * The ability to be universal explainer * Be disobedient * Things that we need in society * Openness, [Error Correction](Error%20Correction.md), [Poppers Political Philosophy](Poppers%20Political%20Philosophy.md) * W Notes * [Superintelligence](Superintelligence.md) * [Observations are not Sources of Knowledge](Observations%20are%20not%20Sources%20of%20Knowledge.md) * Open Questions * aren’t people universal explainers? What does that mean? * why would AI be a "mould breaking technology"? We already have billions of humans. In principle this shouldn't happen. I believe it is a matter of philosophy. A good outcome would be to delegate the persperation phase, leaving the inspiration phase. [Frame.io](https://app.frame.io/presentations/3828e480-1c06-4758-8033-6c453466ba8a) --- Date: 20240912 Links to: [Beginning of Infinity](Beginning%20of%20Infinity.md) Tags: References: * []()