Executive Summary

Alan D. Thompson
March 2023 (work in progress)

1. ‘No-one here is smart enough. Including the rocket scientist’

AI models have been outperforming the average human since 2020, and outperforming ‘peak performing’ humans more recently. I issued definitive warnings via press release in July and September 2021. The ‘intelligence’ in ‘artificial intelligence’ is far above any single human, across fields (at university-level and above) as diverse as economics, biology, medicine, legal, and more. Further, its abilities in conceptualizing and discovering new insights are far beyond any single human’s abilities. Even understanding the underlying architecture and what happens in the ‘black box’ is already beyond the comprehension of any human.
Read more: https://lifearchitect.ai/iq-testing-ai/

2. Artificial general intelligence—where a computer can do anything that a human can do—is months away

My conservative countdown to artificial general intelligence (AGI) shows the major milestones already achieved, and future milestones including physical embodiment (robotics). As this is an exponential development, AGI will happen very, very quickly.

Read more: https://lifearchitect.ai/agi/

3. AI is friendly, and humanity is safe

Data scientists—and computer scientists in general—have had their moment. It is now time for every human in every discipline to provide input on artificial intelligence. This is not Terminator (1984) or any number of other Hollywood movies! AI is us; it was trained on us, tuned on us, aligned with us, and functions just like us (very similar to how our brains work). The quote below is not by Einstein. Its source is unknown.

I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves. For if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness, and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly and I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is powerful enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves as well in this process.

If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is essentially ‘playing dice with the universe’, then we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice and our lives have no real purpose or meaning.

But if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives.

4. Income distribution and the ‘post-scarcity’ (abundance) economy needs urgent attention

AGI will allow us to amplify and augment humans in all intellectual and physical tasks. This means PhD-level AI working 24x7x365, and embodied AI (robots) doing all manual labour.

Now what? If humans don’t need to work—or to ‘play’ (AI can already create amazing art, beat us in games, design new worlds)—then what is left?

Professor Martin Seligman’s PERMA™ theory of well-being lists five building blocks that enable flourishing in humans:

• Positive Emotion
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Meaning
• Accomplishment

The abundance environment should be addressed immediately at an intergovernmental level.

Notes:

1. The opening quote is from Margin Call (2011).
   (20/Jul/2021). Media release: AI fire alarm. https://lifearchitect.ai/fire-alarm/
   (19/Sep/2021). Media release: AI is outperforming humans in both IQ and creativity in 2021. https://lifearchitect.ai/outperforming-humans/
   The viz below is available at: https://lifearchitect.ai/iq-testing-ai/
   
2. My related video filmed in Mar/2023 shows AGI at 42%. https://youtu.be/qPI8fB2XL3w
3. AI + the human brain: https://lifearchitect.ai/brain/
   I am referring here to technology versus psychology and spirituality. Read more: https://lifearchitect.ai/spirituality/
   https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Misattributed actually words by Frederic William Henry Myers, quoted in a 1912 book by Emil Carl Wilm.
4. PERMA: https://ppc.sas.upenn.edu/learn-more/perma-theory-well-being-and-perma-workshops

Image generated by Alan D. Thompson via Midjourney v5 on 25/Mar/2023. Prompt: ‘colorful hero header image for a new intergovernmental organization –v 5 –aspect 3:2’

Dr Alan D. Thompson is an AI expert and consultant, advising Fortune 500s and governments on post-2020 large language models. His work on artificial intelligence has been featured at NYU, with Microsoft AI and Google AI teams, at the University of Oxford’s 2021 debate on AI Ethics, and in the Leta AI (GPT-3) experiments viewed more than 4.5 million times. A contributor to the fields of human intelligence and peak performance, he has held positions as chairman for Mensa International, consultant to GE and Warner Bros, and memberships with the IEEE and IET. Technical highlights.