Michael Nielson, perhaps the most interesting account on Twitter, and
Shan Carter have a wonderful long (and interactive)
essay on how AI can augment human creativity. If you want to build an intuition about how AI might change the ways we think, I highly recommend bookmarking it and taking time to work through it.
Their key insight is that AI can be far more than an “oracle” to which we can outsource thought. Instead, if we create the right
interfaces, AI can “expand the range of thoughts
we can think”. It’s hard to excerpt the essay in a way that brings this idea to life (but if you’re
really short of time, try
this), but the authors note that there is a long history of intellectual tools that have given us superpowers like this - from algebra to Photoshop.
This piece left me thinking that AI interface design is going to be a very exciting area for new startups in the next few years. And, more broadly, it strikes me as the foundation for an optimistic vision for AI that is lacking in most treatments: “It would not be a Singularity in machines. Rather, it would be a Singularity in humanity’s range of thought”.