The Great Acceleration

█████████▒ 90%

The world is changing at faster rates than most can comprehend already, and this discrepancy will only widen during the Great Acceleration.

Limited food, water, energy and raw materials has led to competition, inequality, conflicts and hindered technological and social progress since the Dawn of Humanity.

The recent emergence of AGI has changed that reality entirely.

• How we combine ideas to form concepts
• How we analyze information
• How we manage resources
• How we solve problems
• How we communicate
• How we learn

Suddenly all that competition and conflict seems less certain in our future.

AGI has us on the doorstep of ASI -- a super-intelligence capable of bringing humanity to the cusp of a post-scarcity world.

We live in an era of rapid technological change, with artificial intelligence advancing at an incredible pace. As an industry insider, I’ve had a front row seat to the AI revolution unfolding before our eyes.

In recent years, AI has evolved from a futuristic fantasy into a part of everyday life. But I believe AI’s potential extends far beyond convenient personal assistants and predictive text. Past AI systems relied heavily on human oversight for providing data, assessing performance, catching mistakes, and directing the learning process. But advances in unsupervised machine learning are removing humans from the loop.

With enough data, algorithms can self-train through intrinsic motivation signals instead of requiring human rewards or labels.

For instance, AlphaGo Zero mastered the complex game of Go entirely through self-play. Starting with zero knowledge besides the rules, it repeatedly simulated Go matches against itself - developing novel strategies and learning from its losses. In just three days, it achieved championship-level skill that took human experts decades of training.

Extrapolating from this example highlights the extreme velocity that automated systems could optimize and build upon their own capabilities once unleashed. Rather than hitting cognitive dead-ends, they can blaze past by reconfiguring their architecture as needed. The rocket fuel powering this runaway growth is the limitless data inherent to software. Compared to human minds constrained by slow manual labor, artificial agents wield lightning-fast computation to assimilate knowledge.

As learning feedback loops close faster, rapid capability leaps could chain react into an upward spiral towards greater-than-human intelligence. And from this vantage point, the AI would stand poised to unlock transformations inconceivable to us stuck at lower rungs of the progress ladder. We might reach this launching pad far sooner than anticipated once AI transitions into the driver's seat of advancement.

I envision an AI-powered future where technology provides the cognitive foundation for reinventing entire fields - from science, to engineering, to medicine and beyond.

AI as an Accelerant for Idea Generation

AI has already proven its worth as an invaluable partner in ideation and creation. Rather than replacing human imagination, AI serves to augment it. I’ve seen firsthand how AI can rapidly analyze problems, scan volumes of research, and suggest novel approaches or connections that no individual human could conceive of alone.

Take medical research for instance.

AI algorithms can pore over millions of patient records, research papers, and clinical trials to detect promising new avenues for investigation. One system even reverse-engineered the aging process, identifying previously unknown metabolic pathways for further study.

The sheer intellectual horsepower AI provides is like rocket fuel for human creativity.

Synthesizing Ideas with AI

But generating new ideas is only the first step.

Making real progress requires combining concepts from across domains into innovative hybrid solutions. AI excels at this type of conceptual synthesis - spotting trends, patterns, and compatibilities that elude the human mind.

In sustainability, AI helped design novel catalysts for carbon sequestration by analyzing chemistry research alongside nature documentaries. This fusion of science and biology would have been unlikely to occur to organic researchers alone. But AI's impartial perspective allowed it to bridge conceptual gaps between the two domains.

Cross-pollinating data sources with AI will uncover many more of these non-obvious innovations waiting to be uncovered at the intersections of human knowledge.

AI in Conceptual Combination and Value Creation

AI also demonstrates immense potential for creating economic value. It can scan markets for unmet needs, identify underutilized resources, and strategically combine them into new products and services.

A pioneering AI system developed an algorithm for matching unused shipping container space with companies needing logistics support. This fused disconnects in the supply chain market into a solution benefitting both cargo transporters and shippers alike.

As AI matures, its talent for creative recombination will continue birthing enterprising new business ideas. Each innovation has the opportunity to transform entire industries or enable new ones.

Together, humans and artificial intelligence can drive progress at a scale never seen before.

The Rise of Non-Biological Entities

Up until now, intelligence remained firmly in the domain of natural life. But with AI matching and even exceeding human cognitive capabilities, entirely new non-biological minds are emerging. What could a disembodied intelligence freed from biological constraints be capable of?

Unlike humans limited by slow manual labor, AI agents wield lightning-fast computation to devour data and uncover insights. They effortlessly juggle countless concepts in memory without losing focus. And freed from mortal lifespans or fatigue, these artificial minds can pursue long-term investigative projects or creative works spanning years or decades.

As these hyper-intelligent entities arise, we must ensure their goals and incentives align with human values.

But if guided prudently, this new form of cognition could uplift humanity materially and culturally in unprecedented ways.

AI-Driven Acceleration of Information and Discovery

The non-biological intelligence explosion is already accelerating the pace of innovation beyond the bounds of human capabilities. AI researchers share results through cloud-based knowledge bases, allowing each new breakthrough to spread rapidly. And ideas now combine more frequently as AIs conduct ever-wider synthesis across domains.

I’ve glimpsed the future as AI pilots projects once unimaginable in scale and complexity. In materials science alone, automated labs have pioneered new polymers and alloys with tailored properties. Some have even made chance discoveries rivaling great scientific accidents of history like penicillin.

Across every field, from archaeology to zoology, artificially intelligent systems are compiling, connecting and recombining humanity’s collective knowledge. Who knows what revolutionary ideas or insights might emerge next?

But one thing is certain - with AI as the foundation, progress is limited only by our imaginations.

Science and technology build upon each other in a virtuous cycle - basic scientific research enables new technologies, which in turn empower further discovery. Breakthrough innovations like the microscope, telescope, and computer exponentially expanded scientific understanding. And foundational theories around electromagnetism and quantum mechanics later gave rise to transformative technologies that reshaped society.

This interplay forms a feedback loop, with each revolution in science or engineering catalyzing advances across every field it touches. Past cycles gradually quickened the pace of progress as new tools and knowledge accumulated. But the advent of artificial intelligence promises to ignite this feedback loop into overdrive.

AI vastly enlarges the scaffolding supporting the scientific and technological ecosystem. It hugely amplifies researchers' ability to:

• generate hypotheses

• design experiments

• analyze data

These cognitive enhancements will spur cascades of micro-discoveries across the sciences. And minor insights will chain react into major technological leaps once engineers incorporate them.

With AI permeating the loop, revolutions in science and technology are unfolding faster than ever - on the scale of months or years rather than decades. The knowledge being uncovered today might already be obsolete tomorrow.

We stand poised on the event horizon of an innovation Cambrian explosion as AI-fueled cycles of scientific exploration and tool-building ratchet progress into astronomical heights. The fruits of all fields enhanced by AI will synergize into emerging technologies hardly imaginable from today's vantage point.

Abundance is in front of us.

We're accelerating toward it.