The Thinking Helmet

Article re-posted from May 4, 2015

‘The Thinking Helmet’, or why AI won’t take over management anytime soon. I once read (cannot find the original author, plz help!): ‘a rational mind learns the rules of the world and adjusts himself to the world around him, while an irrational mind adjusts the rules to himself. Therefore, progress is built on the irrational mind’.

An interesting saying with a core of truth that can be used in the discussion about AI; irrational thinking creating randomized outcomes that might push progress towards new heights unimaginable with rational thinking based on existing available data. It’s the ‘leap of faith’ so to say, and while I’m not advocating for irrational behavior to be norm, we also cannot dismiss it.
This is one of the weakest links in ‘the AI will take over’. When working with neural-network AI I’ve seen the element of progress in AI thinking which basically follows the formula of: ‘attempting something, then gathering info and forming an opinion about it by placing it in a hierarchy’, however AI can only use parameters defined by current-state rational formula’s, therefor will need a bit of a ‘magical input from time to time’.

Now what this ‘magical input’ really is delves too deep into the philosophy of our conscious being and thinking, but the key message here is; raw intelligence/processing power isn’t the only formula to success and until we’ve figured out how to reproduce the ultimate balance between the rational and irrational elements that make our thinking and behavior exponentially more innovative, AI will always remain an extension of our own thinking or dependent on it (even if it is ‘smarter than us’).
Think about it, your computer is already smarter than you in a very selective way; calculating things, statistics-gathering & filtering, etc. -> why is it still ‘stupid’ and requires constant human input and upgrading?
The real AI threat will come from human-terrorism (humans inserting this behavior), not from sentience that supersedes us in raw intelligence (at least not for the foreseeable future).


Anyways, didn’t want to rant too long on AI, I was going for what I think will be the one of the biggest expansion towards human abilities to advance in the near future which does combine the 2 in an elegant and practical way: brain-processing-expansion…

Whenever it comes to technological advancement we’re always limited to a random dice-roll level of intelligence we get at birth (as well as proper nurturing ofc). Now even with bio-engineering ‘upgrades’ we’re still limited towards bio-mass unless we start doing some horribly risky things (genetically manipulating people to the point where we resemble ‘Dune’s navigator-worms’).

No, the short-term modern solution which is the most plausible will be a device people put on their heads which increases their brains ‘processing power’. What this does is take perfect advantage of our desire to be ‘in control’, minimizing the risk of enemy-human or random-bug/error interference and provides optimal balance between a ‘humans touch’ and ‘raw industrial intelligence’.
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Think about it, we already have a device that upgrades our abilities where we can see at night:

and we’re currently developing devices that form a ‘heads-up display’ to process information ‘for us’ to ensure our thinking can go towards decision-making, rather than information filtering/gathering:

The most logical step towards the requirement of more intelligence to push beyond our current understandings and ever-more-complicated society therefore is a device people can place on their heads like a ‘helmet’ or ‘glasses’ which provides an enormous amount of extra processing power for their brain to utilize during that time-period.

Considering it’s likely an exhausting experience for your brain, I wouldn’t think people would use it for more than a couple hours a day, yet it would be used in work situations mostly.

This might sound weird but you don’t really need extra intelligence for anything else than work, learning, studying, etc. so as collage students these days are already taking pills that enhance their concentration and learning abilities today, in the future this could be an as easy a thing as putting on your ‘VR / Computation glasses’ which focus on doing all the processing for you, so you can focus on the creative decision-making, learning whats most important or creating something new.

After that, likely a nap is in order  Quality over quantity people, don’t forget 

​Last but not least; I’m not grasping this out of thin air, a quick Google already provided some interesting articles that are already a step in this direction:
http://www.cnet.com/news/electric-thinking-cap-speeds-learning/