[ExI] Future AI Swarm Intelligence

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 18/10/2026 14:03, BillK wrote:
> Swarm Intelligence
> Kevin Kelly      Oct 12, 2026
>
> <https://kevinkelly.substack.com/p/swarm-intelligence>
> Quotes:
> Fifty years from now most AI is invisible. There is nothing to see. It
> is sort of like air – always there, always on, everywhere. Something
> you need and use but take for granted. AI is so prevalent we become
> blind to it.
>
> So an average day 50 years from now in this swarm AI world, we will
> not be talking about AI. We will hardly see it. It will be everywhere,
> embedded into everything. We will have one or two personal agents we
> depend on and like; these exoselves might be like our twins or
> partners, but beyond them, we won’t be encountering AI. We’ll just
> encounter the world – cars, tools, kitchens, planes, offices, doors,
> screens – and that world has AI embedded into every bit of it.
> --------------------
>
> Of course, this view of the future assumes that humans survive the AGI
> apocalypse.
> BillK


That strikes me as ridiculous. Predicting 50 years ahead?

Suppose the doubling time of technological advancement in general becomes 1 year in 2030 (which might be reasonable, or it might be pessimistic. Nobody seems to talk about that point (when do we get to doubling each year), so I'm guessing really). He's talking about roughly 45 years beyond that.

45 doublings. Let's call it 40, just for the sake of it. No, let's call it 30 so the numbers don't look too extreme. So he's basically trying to predict what technology will be like in about 16 million years worth of tech. development.
Adjust those figures for uncertainty, uneven progress, etc., and we're still talking about at least hundreds of thousands of years equivalent.

Will there even be humans then? Difficult to guess. And I don't just mean because we all might be dead. c.f. Keith's story, 'The Clinic Seed'.

People always overestimate short-term development, and underestimate long-term development.
-- 
Ben
"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." - Pablo Casals, via Albert Einstein