Core Message
This article challenges the fear that Artificial Intelligence will achieve superintelligence and replace humans. Based on the analysis of economist James Rickards, it argues that AI is a useful tool but has fundamental limitations that prevent it from surpassing human intellect, and is in fact showing signs of degrading performance.
Key Arguments & Findings
- Energy Constraint: The exponential energy demand for advancing AI is a major physical barrier, creating an “energy race” that could stall its progress. The article notes that developing the necessary power infrastructure (e.g., numerous nuclear reactors) may be unfeasible.
- Lack of True Creativity: According to the “law of conservation of information,” AI cannot create genuinely new information. It can only process and recombine existing data, lacking human creativity, common sense, and intuition. An experiment is cited where children outsmarted an AI by using a kettle to draw a circle—a common-sense solution the AI couldn’t logically deduce.
- AI Is Getting “Dumber”: A significant issue is that AI models are increasingly trained on data generated by other AIs. This leads to a form of informational “inbreeding,” polluting the data pool and causing the models to become less intelligent and reliable over time.
- Inability to Code Human Logic: Core human attributes like common sense, gut feelings, and compassion cannot be programmed. AI processes information mathematically but does not “think” in a human sense.
Conclusion
The prospect of a human-level or superior AI (superintelligence) is dismissed as highly unlikely. AI is hitting fundamental logical and physical limits that computational power alone cannot solve. While it remains a valuable tool for rapid information processing, it is not on a path to replace uniquely human qualities like creativity and common sense.
Mentoring Question
The article claims that AI’s lack of common sense and creativity are fundamental, insurmountable barriers. Do you agree with this assessment, or can you envision a future technological breakthrough that might overcome these limitations?
Source: https://biznesalert.pl/ograniczenia-sztucznej-inteligencji-komputer-a-ludzie/