The power to name implies the power to possess, to control, even to dominate.
Thus, in Genesis, shortly after the Almighty breathes life into the newly created Adam, nearly the first thing He does is parade before The First Man every beast of the field and every fowl of the air to see what Adam would name them. And whatever Adam called them, that was their name.
It was God’s way of saying, You name it, you own it.
Which may help explain President Donald Trump’s penchant for naming things, often after himself: Trump Tower, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka and so on.
He’s fond of renaming, as well: The Gulf of Mexico, The Kennedy Center, Lake Ontario, Denali, the Department of Defense. This is one of the ways he marks what he thinks is his.
This context is worth considering as we note that on Sept. 29, Trump renamed AI; its new name is simply Superintelligence.
Trump asserts that AI isn’t really artificial, which, to him, just means fake. But he’s ignoring the primary meaning of the term, which describes something created by humans, that is, an artifact, which AI certainly is. At least so far.
Trump’s new name for AI also ignores several important distinctions:
AI experts often talk about AI, AGI and ASI. AI describes basic machine intelligence that can perform tasks in ways that seem pretty smart, like beat us at chess. AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, describes the point at which AI reaches a level of intelligence equal to humans. And ASI, Artificial Superintelligence, is a level of intelligence that exceeds that of humans.
How far has artificial intelligence advanced along this scale? I’m not qualified to say, and I’m not sure if anyone else is, either. But I have a car that uses AI to drive itself just as well — or better — than I can. That’s pretty intelligent.
If I ask ChatGPT a question, it responds with a generally accurate and comprehensive answer, and it’s willing to elaborate in response to follow-up questions. It remembers what we’ve “talked” about in the past and incorporates that information in current “conversations.”
In fact, the only way it fails to pass the Turing test — the thought experiment developed by computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950 that proposed to distinguish between machine thinking and human thinking — is that ChatGPT produces in 20 seconds the same levels of research that would take a human several hours or longer.
Have we crossed the threshold between Artificial General Intelligence and Artificial Superintelligence? By changing its name from AI to SI — Superintelligence — Trump seems to believe that we already have. He may well be right.
He may also be right about dropping the term “artificial” from ASI. AGI — Artificial General Intelligence — is definitely a human artifact, something created by humans. But as AGI gets better at what AI experts call “recursive self-improvement,” it’s possible that Artificial Superintelligence will be a product of AGI, that is, an artifact produced by an artifact produced by humans.
Superintelligence would be an extraordinary step beyond general human intelligence. And Trump’s renaming of AI may have been an intuitive expression of an idea that he may not fully appreciate the importance of: Superintelligence has already arrived.
But if Trump believes that by renaming AI he can possess or control it, he is mistaken.
In fact, it doesn’t appear that Trump will even try to control it. When he met with the nation’s leading AI and technology movers and shakers recently, they agreed to “self-police,” which is pretty much what they’ve been doing already. Are you reassured?
Some of the AI technocrats and overlords undoubtedly continue to harbor the fears they’ve expressed publicly: Superintelligence — or whatever it’s called — poses a serious threat to our civilization and even to the survival of humankind.
But maybe everything will turn out fine. We can hope. Remember Y2K?
Unfortunately, we are in risky, unknown territory. And merely calling the threat by another name isn’t going to help.
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