Surfing the Super-Intelligence Tsunami — PART 2

In PART 1 the foundations of intelligence were discussed as being consciousness (defined as focused attention) and ethics (defined as analysis of how future choices affect well being). As super-intelligence develops the core elements of consciousness and ethics will also be elevated. In order to “surf” this tsunami wave, humanity will need apply substantial effort into these areas.

It is easier to collect vast amounts of sensory data than it is to create abstractions of that data, search the abstractions for important patterns and analyze which ones are most important and how they should be routed to other mental processing areas. The priority list that determines importance and the quality of the input information is key. In order to elevate our consciousness, we need to selectively increase both the amount of our information inputs and the quality level of them. We need to dynamically update the priority list as needed, and accurately route information on.

Collective consciousness is already being formed by our networked communications and discussions of what is most important. If we apply good knowledge management practices to these areas in terms of highlighting our most important and valid information sources and weeding out false and trivial laden sources, the quality of what we share across the collective will rise. Likewise the priority list. The back end processing can be off-loaded to automated resources leveraging the same advances in computation that are involved in creating super-intelligence.

The priority list enables the start of ethical analysis. This involves predicting future probabilities in trend lines and using priorities to choose actions that will produce well being. Current human ethical practices are often based on slip shod and casual anecdotal learning about the subject. Detailed study is needed and a learning curriculum must be established. Ethics is best understood as a series of concentric circles or even spheres with self at the center, others at the next level out from the center, and groups of others, species and more in consecutive levels. Coefficient weights can be applied to allow comparison of cumulative good vs harm caused by the same action choice on different levels. The way in which levels are defined and coefficients are assigned will determine differences in ethical processing results produced by varying configurations. Once the design is accomplished and configurations variations are resolved by consensus, this entire process can be automated to provide ethical advice.

Super-intelligent assistants can be applied to correlate incoming information and perform pre-focusing in order to streamline our development of consciousness. They can be used for quality checking on both information and the priority list at the collective level. Similar tools can be applied to automated ethical analysis. As super-intelligence grows, these areas of human intelligence can grow with them. Just as consciousness is developed in a process of focusing attention on high priority information, collective consciousness can be amplified by a super-intelligent agent overseeing the collective focus and priority setting. While it seems certain that individual human intelligence will lag behind the rapid improvement of synthetic super-intelligence, the resulting hybrid form of super-intelligence composing both synthetic and collective intelligence will be able to keep up the pace.