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With much of our attention focused the rise of advanced artificial intelligence, few consider the potential for radically amplified human intelligence (IA). Its an open question as to which will come first, but a technologically boosted brain could be just as powerful and just as dangerous as AI. As a species, weve been amplifying our brains for millennia. Or at least weve tried to. Looking to overcome our cognitive limitations, humans have employed everything from writing, language, and meditative techniques straight through to todays nootropics. But none of these compare to whats in store. Unlike efforts to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), or even an artificial superintelligence (SAI), the human brain already presents us with a pre-existing intelligence to work with. Radically extending the abilities of a pre-existing human mind whether it be through genetics, cybernetics or the integration of external devices could result in something quite similar to how we envision advanced AI. Looking to learn more about this, I contacted futurist Michael Anissimov, a blogger atAccelerating Future and a co-organizer of the Singularity Summit. Hes given this subject considerable thought and warns that we need to be just as wary of IA as we are AI. Michael, when we speak of Intelligence Amplification, what are we really talking about? Are we looking to create Einsteins? Or is it something significantly more profound? The real objective of IA is to create super-Einsteins, persons qualitatively smarter than any human being that has ever lived. There will be a number of steps on the way there. The first step will be to create a direct neural link to information. Think of it as a "telepathic Google." The next step will be to develop brain-computer interfaces that augment the visual cortex, the bestunderstood part of the brain. This would boost our spatial visualization and manipulation capabilities. Imagine being able to imagine a complex blueprint with high reliability and detail, or to learn new blueprints quickly. There will also be augmentations that focus on other portions of sensory cortex, like tactile cortex and auditory cortex. The third step involves the genuine augmentation of pre-frontal cortex. This is the Holy Grail of IA research enhancing the way we combine perceptual data to form concepts. The end result would be cognitive super-McGyvers, people who perform apparently impossible intellectual feats. For instance, mind controlling other people, beating the stock market, or designing inventions that change the world almost overnight. This seems impossible to us now in the same way that all our modern scientific achievements would have seemed impossible to a stone age human but the possibility is real.
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