We are looking at Artificial Intelligence all wrong. During the first decade of this century, while running my startup ReviewGist.com, machine learning felt stagnant. Neural networks existed, but their capabilities were too rudimentary to suggest we were anywhere near replicating human intelligence. Then, in 2013, everything changed. Neural networks began to understand images, a feat which was never possible through code. The barrier had been broken.
Pushed by this breakthrough and a life-changing event in 2017, I began to see a shocking future take shape - one that the 2022 launch of ChatGPT only confirmed.
In this book, I argue that the very term "Artificial Intelligence" is a dangerous misnomer. The word "artificial" implies something fake or simulated. The intelligence emerging today is functionally identical to our own; its only difference is the silicon substrate it roots itself in. It is not Artificial Intelligence. It is Non-Biological Intelligence.
Furthermore, the highly anticipated leap to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) obscures the true reality. What we are actually building - and what will become undeniable, perhaps as soon as 2030, is Non-Biological Sentience.
Treating AI as merely an "advanced technology" gives us the illusion of control, falsely equating it to something we can manage, like nuclear weapons. But if AI is a harbinger of Non-Biological Sentience - a completely independent and arguably exponentially more capable species - our future doesn't depend on control.
It depends on our ability to negotiate a truce, no matter how fragile, for as long as we can.
