SuperIntelligence
What does Superintelligence mean and how far away is it?
What if it is already here and in our past? I was recently pointed at the original Turing paper that he is famous for:
Microsoft Word - TuringTest.doc (umbc.edu)
There were a couple of ideas in the paper that got me really thinking about not just AI but also about superintelligence: One is his formulation that “A digital computer can usually be regarded as consisting of three parts: (i) Store. (ii) Executive unit. (iii) Control.” combined with his discussion of critical mass.
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on this and wondered whether anyone had looked at human organization as a form of artificial superintelligence. Looking at Turing’s above formulation but at civilizations from long ago:
The written word is equivalent to storage.
Individual humans have processing power, the executive unit
Control is provided by the culture/laws/rules we live by.
There has been some cross pollination between the Organizational Theory(OT) and AI disciplines.
I was then listening to a podcast where the topic of Egypt’s pyramids came up and the incredulousness of the hosts at how they could possibly have been built. I propose that Egypt was one of the first civilizations to actually create artificial human superintelligence(written word and sophisticated control), enabling them to build these marvelous structures with limited technology and it has been an arms race ever since.
Then I got to thinking about malware…we know about harmful code. What if harmful code is inserted into the Control element of the human superintelligence? Are the horrors of 1940’s Germany, and the Soviet Union extreme examples? Are some of the corporate scandals also examples (ENRON)? Could these have come about because of a corruption in the control function of the superintelligence?
Then I got to thinking of Turing’s discussion of critical mass and extending this to human superintelligence: at what point does the human organization begin to become superintelligent? Become something different than human? At what point does THE leader of an organization lose their autonomy? I was speaking with the owner and leader of a business a number of years ago, and I he recounted a metaphor he came up with: People look at the business owner like he is riding a tiger, “That’s awesome how does he do that!?” (controlling the tiger), but the guy riding the tiger is hanging on, and the damn thing keeps getting bigger and stronger. There may be some truth in this metaphor and it may be related to this idea of superintelligence.
What kind of lessons do we have in here for how we lead and structure our organizations? We certainly have control elements vis-a-vis values, policies, etc. that leaders are actually in control of at least to some extent. By setting up the right “Control” aspects in mission, values, vision, culture, etc is the animal necessarily a tiger? Could it be something more domesticable like an Indian elephant? Maybe it is not something we are riding at all if we do it right. If malware gets inserted could it become a tiger? Maybe I’m taking the metaphor too far, but my sense is there is something in this. Maybe we have a whole ecosystem of different types of organizations out there that are as radically different from each other as the creatures in nature. Could two organizations both delivering engineering services could be as different as a tree and a tiger?
Please get in touch with me if you want to geek out on this or any topic related to leadership.
Thank you all for subscribing and for your support in this new journey I am taking.
With Gratitude and Respect,
Nik
