[ExI] Will the Singularity take an unexpected path?

[BillK]

<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/about/news/1418>

An AI professor in the UK has made a presentation that sounded unusual
to me.  He sees narrow AI proliferating wildly, until we are
surrounded by thousands of invisible helpers, all doing their own tiny
process.

Quote -
He believes that we are now seeing the emergence of Assistive
Intelligence which can be characterized as a different kind of AI.
'These results can be seen everywhere,' he says. 'Rather than being
conscious brains in a box, as Hollywood would have it, they are in
fact small pieces of adaptive and flexible software that help drive
our cars, diagnose disease and provide opponents in computer games.'

And he sees this as a trend that will continue. 'There will be
micro-intelligences all around us – systems that are very good and
adaptive at particular tasks, and we will be immersed in environments
stuffed full of helpful devices.'
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This is a form of human augmentation that I haven't heard before.
More like augmenting the environment around humans, so that the matter
around us is gradually becoming intelligent.  Quite a thought.
Hmmmmm.


BillK