Submitted by latiostw t3_xy8unj in Futurology
Assuming the costs of AI training and inference continues to drop dramatically within the next 10 years, what do you think is the ideal mechanism through which to symbiotically fuse human and machine intelligence?
Something for physically disabled people. We're already close with speech engines, smart prosthetics and direct-brain sensory stims to give the blind rudimentary sight.
We're already there, google is a good example. These types of questions remind me of the writer Pierre Tielhard Du Chardin. He was a Jesuit priest who was exiled to China by the church for his writings. He's the man who predicted the internet, in some very specific ways, way back in the twenties and thirties. His writing is an interesting amalgam of very spiritual thought and a faith that science would bring mankind together to become something together, something greater than the sum of it's parts. If you end up liking that idea you might like some of his non-anthropological books like "The Future of Man". It's amazing how many of the things he predicted about the future of technology have come true.
Not sure if I'm being cheeky but "augmentations" like this have existed for millennia.
Most recently, smartphones, or more generally the internet, have made it so anyone can know basically any information they need to, on demand, almost all the time. Some functions, such as calculators, don't even need the internet.
However, we can go back further. I'd say the first technological enhancement of human intelligence was writing, vastly improving the memory of anyone who uses it.
We may not be physically implanted with machines, but humans have been using technology to augment their intelligence almost as long as technology has existed. And honestly, the capabilities we have right now are probably nearly as effective as whatever the optimal version is, at least if they're used correctly.
You may not feel any smarter, but the end result is the same. The system comprised of you and everything you carry is much smarter. Similar to the [Chinese Room.] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room)
Can you really call it human intelligence if they become stupid from relying on an assist instead of their own knowledge base. 🤔
Ever seen Quiet Place? Aural implants that give hearing to the deaf have existed for a decade now. We can now bypass “bad spine” as a surgeon might say, using simple copper to bridge working sections of spinal nerves, restoring movement and sensation to the paralyzed. Even nowadays Major Depression (a very common cause of disability) is being treated as a *physical* illness, with magnetic resonance machines targeting under-utilized sections of the brain to very promising effect- can you imagine if we could CURE depression?!? That would be a discovery rivaling an end to cancer, which also seems to be a near inevitability in light of recent drug therapies.
ttkciar t1_irfyqek wrote
I would have said something like Google Glass, but we have seen the social flaws in that approach.
Barring that, smartphone apps seem like the obvious runner-up. A smartphone-centric personal assistant which helps people make better life choices would be a gimme.
Alternatively, a distributed TaskRabbit-like application where AI anticipates people's needs and points potential helpers at them could tremendously benefit society.
That might be a less glamorous interface than cybernetic implants, but it's achievable with what we have now.