Intelligence is a system that receives input from the world and uses the laws of physics to calculate the best way to change the system to ensure its continued survival.
This feedback loop of encountering input and using the universe to calculate an updated state is what we call learning.
When I make a specific sound in the kitchen—the crinkling of a cheese wrapper—my dog will immediately come running based on a calculation derived from a tiny change of air pressure that reaches her ears.
The air pressure is converted through movements in hair cells to voltages. The signals are interpreted through physical processes which trigger chemical reactions in neurons. This spikes a signal to her motor cortex which causes her to come begging.
If I give her a piece of cheese, this reinforces the neural pathways by physically changing the cells to be more receptive to this sequence.
None of this is calculated. None of it is digital. There is no separation of memory and processing. There is no separation of hardware and software. She doesn’t update a hard drive.
She is a physical system using the laws of the universe to change herself in a way that increases her chances of continuing to exist as a system. That’s incredibly intelligent.
Digital computers can’t do this. Ever. They ignore the best computer ever created—the laws of physics—to recreate a crude simulation of physical laws which only does arithmetic on a set of 1s and 0s.
Digital AI cannot learn from the world or experience it because they are not in it. They are patterns of bits recycled from the detritus of mankind—pushed through silicon by sheer brute force.
The future of AI is intelligent matter—neuromorphics, memristors, and photonics. Artificial general intelligence will emerge from technologies which can actually learn and use physics to calculate new directions.
It will not come from our old ideas, digitized and sold back to us as slop.
GPUs, transformers, and chatbots are a dead end. They are not answering the right question.
The correct question is not: “How do we best simulate what intelligence produces?”
The right question is: “How do we configure the right set of physical matter in which intelligence will arise as a result of the laws of the universe?”
Please join me and our community today, Sunday Noon PT / 3PM ET for a discussion about what makes us human, alive, and conscious, and how the AI industry wants to take all of that away. The floor is always open to questions or comments on any topic. It’s always a great conversation. Details below!