Machine Learning and the evolution of extended human capabilities
Machine Learning is an extension of the toolset that humans have invented to create change at scale in the world around them.
A coarse view of the Evolution of Technology shows the development of humans using more energy and more information more effectively to expand the capabilities of individuals and groups. These are the twin effects of Leverage and Automation.
There have been four big stops on this journey so far:
The rise of machines that could work on our behalf.
The rise of mass production, that greatly accelerated the precision and scale of machines that could work on our behalf.
The rise of software that could make decisions on our behalf.
The rise of AI, that greatly accelerates the precision and scale of decision-making that can be taken on our behalf.
This evolution of extending human capabilities can be further divided between technologies whose key innovation is to build in the physical world (move atoms), and those that make decisions (move bits). Note, moving bits comes with the bonus that it can be coupled with machines to move atoms.
The rise of atom-moving technologies was an evolution from manual tools to harnessing Steam and then Electricity to do more work.
The rise of bit-moving technologies was the harnessing of digital information, etched into silicon to do computation on our behalf. The first wave of implementations needed to be explicitly programmed (software). The latest wave, allows the machine to find patterns itself (machine learning).
Machine Learning (even pre-AGI) promises massive leaps forward forward in the outsourcing of human thought and the use of leverage in human action.
Software is eating the world, and AI is eating Software.