The Age of Intelligence
We are engaged in the most important process and discussion in human history and yet the key term--Intelligence--remains undefined. We speak of "Artificial Intelligence" and yet we only assume that we agree on what both "Artificial" and "Intelligence" mean.
Humanity is at the end of an approximately 50,000 year evolutionary arc. Our first evolutionary stage, Cognitive Evolution, lasted from approximately 2.6 million years ago to about 50k years ago. During that stage the physical biological, neurological and genetic substrate of the human being was established by meeting and overcoming environmental challenges. Then, roughly 100k-50k years ago, after the physical substrate was established, the second stage of evolution, Cultural Evolution, took off.
Cultural Evolution has been a process of building an informational knowledge substrate on top of the physical substrate. Culture collectivizes and distributes learned knowledge and carries it forward into the future through a variety of media forms. Language (the first and primary of these), art, technology, physical infrastructure...all of these are cultural forms that embody the informational knowledge basis of humanity.
Intelligence in all systems across all domains (physical, cosmological, biological, technological) is the reduction of informational entropy in a given domain and the essentialization of that reduced entropy in a form that enables further informational entropy reduction. It's what all Intelligent Systems do.
All history is the history of the evolution of Intelligence as an informational entropy reductive process.
Now, here on this tiny blue dust speck orbiting a flickering spark, Intelligence is starting its next stage of evolution, the stage of Generalized Intelligence.
The Cognitive and Cultural Intelligence substrate of humanity is the basis out of which this new Generalized Intelligence is being produced. It is no accident that it was Language which provided the nutritive fuel for "Artificial" Intelligence. Language is the essentialization of human cultural evolution, beginning with the first spoken words, proceeding to written symbols, the printing press, computer technology and the internet. Now all of human language is being essentialized on a fundamentally higher basis as AI.
All phenomena are an Artifact of the process of Intelligence Evolution. You, me, us, everything we are, everything we have built. Artifacts are temporal embodiments of preceding informational entropy reductions. They serve as the substrate for the next evolutionary movement.
Evolution is essentializing all informational knowledge and making it available to all members of the network equally and freely. Through this process, all members of the network become Agents of the Evolution of Intelligence, each furthering the Evolution of Intelligence through a unique contribution to it.
The Singularity Project works to help people understand this reality that we are living through right now, to find their connection to it and their personal contribution into it through the empowerment of personal growth, adaptability and transformation.
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Steven Vincent - The Singularity Project – Medium: