My neighbor sent me his new book, and I really like the thought experiment of divining humanity’s mission statement. What is the purpose of humanity? It is a bold and important question, and before reading Yuri’s summary in the photo, take a moment to answer for yourself… Think long term, as if humanity itself was facing a midlife crisis. What jumps to mind?
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Yuri’s answer seems so simple at first, perhaps obvious in retrospect, but I often find that is the sign of a powerful idea. I believe we individually seek symbolic immortality, to contribute something that outlasts our brief time on this planet. Collectively, we accumulate knowledge through the scientific method and the slow wisdom of cultural evolution. Exploring and understanding the universe — nothing more?
I see “life” as the counter-entropic force that accumulates information and understanding over time. Do we continue on this exponential curve for as long as possible, racing against the ultimate heat death revenge of entropy?
Yuri’s answer also relates to the selfish meme hypothesis — that our minds are merely vessels for the spread and recombination of ideas. Since every new idea is a combination of prior ideas, we observe a combinatorial explosion of idea space. This may be the underpinning of accelerating change in technology, broadly defined.
With AGI, we will no longer be the primary vector of evolutionary advance, nor the locus of learning in these mimetic recombination networks. It’s not just that their minds may be more capable or faster… they will be networked, and ideas can recombine with a newfound rapidity (much like the internet afforded for humanity). I don’t think we can “direct AI to the mission” as Yuri implores, any more than we could direct a teenager. But I do hope we can inspire and lead by example.
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