Convergence: Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing

CHAPTER 13The Advancement of Intelligence or the End of It?

Kate Jeffery, Professor, School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of Glasgow

Of the universe's roughly 13 billion years, the last four billion years or so have seen an extraordinary development: the evolution of life on Earth. First came simple unicellular life, then simple multicellular life, and finally complex multicellular life, culminating in nervous systems and eventually cognition. The pinnacle of this process (so we like to think) is human intelligence, which has allowed us to create science and technology and so vastly expand the scope and scale of life's operations. We have even managed, probably for the first time in the history of terrestrial life, to escape the surface of the planet. Now, we humans have used our ingenuity to create a new type of intelligence that depends not on biological molecules but instead on silicon-based computing and is tapping into new domains of physics that even life has not yet discovered. Although we have not yet cracked the problem of creating a truly intelligent artificial intelligence (AI), it is surely only a matter of time. Technology is advancing rapidly, silicon-based evolution is surpassing carbon-based evolution, and the future possibilities seem boundless.

Then what? Are we on the brink of a glorious new era of evolution in which intelligent life in the universe is no longer carbon-based? Will our silicon-based descendants venture out into the cosmos and become ...