Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies - Chapter 3

Forms of superintelligence

As already stated, superintelligence, according to Bostrom, has to do with intellects that vastly outperform “the best current human minds across many very general cognitive domains.” 

Speed superintelligence

A speed superintelligence is an intellect that can intellectually operate and function like a human brain but quicker. 

The most straightforward instance of speed superintelligence would be a whole brain emulation operating on fast hardware. A whole brain emulation running “at a speed of ten thousand times that of a biological brain would be able to read a book in a few seconds and write a PhD thesis in an afternoon.” If the emulation would be operating at a speed of a million times faster than that of a human brain, it could feasibly achieve “an entire millennium of intellectual work in one working day.”

Collective superintelligence

Collective superintelligence can be defined as a system that contains a great amount of smaller intellects and in consequence, the system’s overall performance greatly outperforms any current cognitive system in a range of domains of interest. 

Consequently, this system which is composed of highly skilled and knowledgeable workers, could tackle intellectual problems through collaboration from a range of sectors and industries. This organization could run most types of businesses, invent the latest innovative technologies, and ensure each task is solved as efficiently as possible. 

Collective superintelligence, can be proved by an example laid out by the author, that of MegaEarth. MegaEarth contains the same communication and coordination technologies that we have today on planet Earth but the population of MegaEarth is greater than the population of Earth by one million times. This gigantic population would result in the total intellectual workforce on MegaEarth being vastly greater than planet Earth. Therefore, considering that “a scientific genius of the caliber of a Newton or an Einstein arises at least once for every 10 billion people: then on MegaEarth there would be 700,000 such geniuses living contemporaneously, alongside proportionally vast multitudes of slightly lesser talents.” Innovations would be developed at an extraordinary speed and hence, MegaEarth is an illustration of collective superintelligence. 

Quality superintelligence

Quality superintelligence is “a system that is at least as fast as a human mind and vastly qualitatively smarter.” 

This definition points to the notion of quality superintelligence in that it is intelligence of quality larger than human intelligence like the quality of human intelligence is larger than the intelligence of other animals. For example, if humans did not have the cognitive ability to perform complex linguistic representations, we would not have evolved as we did. 

Direct and indirect reach

Superintelligence in any of these forms could, eventually, establish the required technology in order to bring the other types to life. The indirect reaches of these three types of superintelligence are, hence, equal.

The direct reaches of the three different forms of superintelligence might have no definite ordering. Their capabilities depend on the level to which they make use of their advantages: “how fast a speed superintelligence is, how qualitatively superior a quality superintelligence is, and so forth.” 

In fact, quality superintelligence could be the most capable of all types of superintelligence, since it could tackle problems that are beyond the direct reach of the other types. 

Sources of advantage for digital intelligence

Accordingly, digital intelligence has the following advantages:

1. Speed of computational elements.

2. Internal communication speed. Axons (neurons in the human brain) operate at speeds of 120 m/s or less, “whereas electronic processing cores can communicate optically at the speed of light. (300,000,000 m/s)”

3. Number of computational elements. The biological brain has less than 100 billion neurons whereas computer hardware can increase up to incredibly high physical limits.

4. Storage capacity. Human working memory is not capable of holding more than four or five pieces of information at any given time, whereas a machine brain can store a greater amount of information than in a biological brain.

5. Reliability, lifespan, sensors, etc. “Machine intelligences might have various other hardware advantages. For example, biological neurons are less reliable than transistors.”

Digital minds will also benefit from fundamental benefits in software: 

1. Editability. 

2. Duplicability. 

3. Goal coordination. Software systems can act in complete harmony towards their goals, something that cannot be said with that much certainty with humans.

4. Memory sharing.

5. New modules, modalities, and algorithms.