Are we there yet? At the intelligence explosion?

Are we actually finally there?

25 years ago, back in the last millennium, in the year of 1999. I was one of 25 chosen ones. We were the future of Swedbank Markets, the finest of the finest of the investment banking arm of Sweden’s largest bank. We studied finance, macroeconomy, negotiation tactics, even banquet etiquette.

During our frequent gatherings, I waxed lyrically about the coming era of nanotechnology and of the technological Singularity. I had read both Drexler and Kurzweil, not to mention classic AI and nanotech sci-fi novels like Neuromancer and Diamond Age.

I told my fellow chosen ones, whether they liked it or not, how we already by 2025 would experience unfathomable technological advances. They thought I was crazy, delusional, unhinged. Entertaining but bordering on retarded in my techno optimism.

Over the years, I turned less optimistic regarding the promises of useful AI. My explorations of the human psyche and my studies of the human connectome and workings of the wetware itself (through books about psychedelics by Jim Fadiman, Stanislav Grof, the Brain Science Podcast by Ginger Campbell that taught me about both the human connectome and infinitely complex synaptic proteome, and various signal processing algorithms, hierarchical hidden Markov models and much more) made me pessimistic about the potential for enhanced thinking and machine-human and human-human mind melding.

Just the recent twelve months I’ve scoffed at the “deranged hopes” of both renowned AI scientists and ordinary newbies.

But now I’m turning (optimistic) again.

I’m starting to feel Feynman was right all along back in 1959. There really is plenty of room at the bottom! And that I.J Good was prophetic in 1965 when he said that the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make. Drexler’s seminal works on proving the feasibility of nano factories, ultimately controlling the assembly of atom by atom, including his first pop-science book Engines Of Creation (1986) were what first turned me onto the idea of sci-fi being real. And then there is Kurzweil, whose Singularity keeps drawing nearer.

After a few years of huge leaps in capabilities for ChatGPT (OpenAI/Microsoft) and all the other LLM-based AI systems, like Grok (Elon Musk), Claude (Anthropic), MidJourney, and actually many many more, not least non-US based systems - some known, most unknown and most likely government controlled, I’ve finally come around full circle to thinking the intelligence explosion is upon us. The universe might finally actually be waking up (see books by James Gardner, or fictional works by David Simpson).

AI, artificial biology, robotics/automation, nanotechnology will likely in short order (let’s say the decade of the 1930s) cause orders of magnitude of improvements (OOM) from one area to the other and back again. AIs help make better AIs that help design better computer chips and AI algorithms that drive even better designs of robots, automated manufacturing systems, miniaturization (all the way down to the nanoscale, possible aided by biological systems created by custom made enzymes and bacteria, using CRISPR techniques), and so on.