2/19/2004 07:27:00 AM|||Andrew|||Yesterday after my logic class I was discussing how you can define the standard logical operators with the special operations of "neither nor" and "not both." But no one wants to read about some arcane mumbo jumbo like that, and it's not what I'm writing about. A guy mentioned that in his electrical engineering class, a lot of the homework they were assigned basically consisted of doing this same transformation (which isn't difficult, merely time consuming) over and over and over... I suggested that such computationally easy, yet time consuming (for a person) work seemed one of those things that is better left to computers, and he responded that I was right, except that it was their job in that class to understand how computers (or at least electric circuits) really worked.

If you didn't catch any of that, stay with me, because I'm moving from technology to philosophy in this sentence. So I got to thinking... If technology continues to increase, especially at the rate and complexity that it does today, what does that mean for humanity? It seems that as computers are better and better suited to certain problems and skills, less and less people need to know these same skills.

Here's an example: the artist in today's world, for instance, has no real need to understand algebra or calculus, much less anything beyond calculus. The artist may not even need to know arithmetic. Every conceivable use for these mathematical fields can be Easily covered by a simple calculator, big enough to fit in one's pocket. The good side of this is that perhaps now the artist can focus on his creativity even more, to the degree that he doesn't need to know these mathematical fields. But the bad, well, the bad requires another paragraph (or several), I think.

First, as technological complexity increases, human education about technology seems to become more and more a matter of understanding how computers work, rather than teaching or building computers to do what human beings can already do. That itself seems eerily creepy to me, but I must continue. Now, as time passes, technology increases in complexity, at whatever kind of rate. Then as the complexity of a what a computer can do increases, the number of people who fully understand these new complexities decreases, just as in the world, the more complex the concept, the fewer people understand about it. In turn, more and more knowledge becomes redundant for ordinary people to have, and so the number of people understanding this about computers also decreases.

So far, this is all very straightforward. But here come the interesting questions. Is there a point at which no single person on the earth understands all the complexity of the computer, but that as computers are so broad in knowledge, that this fullness of understanding is distributed among various experts? In fact, my guess is that this is true even today. Another question: is there a point at which some point of complexity entirely dissappears from human knowledge altogether?

Consider: a brilliant mathematician comes up with a new and startling theory about some advanced mathematical concepts. Yet, so brilliant is he and so abstract is his idea that no one can understand it, though they can use his principle in various other fields. So he has advanced human knowledge by himself, yet is unable to teach it to others. Frustrated, he works for years and manages to build a sufficiently advanced computer that is able to completely understand this marvelous principle. His design is incorporated into other computers, until it is a common place thing; but still, no one understands. When he dies, no one will know! There will be some point of knowledge that a computer has, but no human being does!

This vision is A.I., not some fruitless search after consciouness. And this vision is more ghastly than those of science fiction writers, predicting the revolt of A.I. against humans. In this vision, human beings willingly give themselves over as slaves, without ever knowing or realizing it. And this vision, I can easily imagine happening, if it hasn't happened already.|||107720444034912132|||