Further
facts
The acceleration of intelligence
The natural trajectory for intelligence is hyper-exponential, for the following reasons:
- Each form of intelligence creates new forms of intelligence.
- Different forms of intelligence will draw upon each other to progress, thus creating complex, positive feedback.
- Creative intelligence leads to conscious self-modification, which is orders of magnitude faster than natural selection
I believe that useful human knowledge will be approx. 45 times as big in year 2050 as it is in 2010. To put that in another way, we probably only have around 2 - 2.5% of the knowledge now, that we will have in 2050 years. We have a lot to learn.
Three lesson about technology
- The developments in virtual or microscopic technologies follow very aggressive progression curves (perhaps doubling performance every 18-24 months), whereas physically/industrial technologies typically only improve around 7 % each time annual output doubles. This is one reason people in the past vastly underestimated or even ignored progress in genomics and IT, whereas they overestimated what would happen with physically heavy industries such as air- and spacecraft.
- Whenever a human problem or demand can be met through information technology or molecular technology (which is also information technology), it is extremely likely that solutions will evolve much faster than demand develops, which leads to falling prices and abundant supply. Failure to see this explains why environmentalists and growth skeptics continuously have completely underestimated human ability to overcome challenges.
- Beyond a threshold, economic growth, new technology and wealth cease to be part of the causes of environmental problems, and become instead part of the solutions. This through the development of clean technologies, investments in recycling, etc. and population stabilization.
