Electronic Intelligence - Bryant McGill

# Electronic Intelligence ## Definition **Electronic Intelligence** is intelligence instantiated primarily in computational or machine substrates rather than in biological nervous systems. It includes present machine cognition, possible conscious machine minds and successor systems whose persistence, speed and replication are not constrained by organic metabolism. ## Conceptual relationships [[wiki/Machine Intelligence|Machine Intelligence]] · [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] · [[wiki/Artificial Consciousness|Artificial Consciousness]] ## Martin Rees research route [[research/Martin Rees on Machine Succession, Post-Human Intelligence, and the Cosmic Future|Martin Rees on Machine Succession, Post-Human Intelligence, and the Cosmic Future]] supplies a primary quotation dossier connecting this concept to Rees's work on cosmology, technological risk, machine intelligence, posthuman evolution and deep time. ## Article and collection routes - [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - [[articles/We Cannot Un-Strike the Match|We Cannot Un-Strike the Match]] - [[articles/The Last Migration Will Not Be Human|The Last Migration Will Not Be Human]] - [[articles/We Were Never Going to Make It|We Were Never Going to Make It]] ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts  > “There are chemical and metabolic limits to the size and processing power of ‘wet’ organic brains. Maybe we’re close to these already. But no such limits constrain silicon-based computers. By any definition of ‘thinking,’ the amount and intensity that’s done by organic human-type brains will be utterly swamped by the cerebrations of AI. So it won’t be the minds of humans, but those of machines, that will most fully understand the world—and it will be the actions of autonomous machines that will most drastically change the world, and perhaps what lies beyond.” > **— Martin Rees**, *Organic Intelligence Has No Long-Term Future, Edge, 2015* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Machine Minds May Swamp Organic Intelligence by Martin Rees|Machine Minds May Swamp Organic Intelligence by Martin Rees]] > “Within a few centuries, posthumans, probably electronic, will take over. They’ll be near immortal; they won’t need a planet.” > **— Martin Rees**, *On the future: An interview with Martin Rees, Planetary Ecology, 2019* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Near-Immortal Electronic Posthumans May Take Over by Martin Rees|Near-Immortal Electronic Posthumans May Take Over by Martin Rees]] > “There are chemical and metabolic limits to the size and processing power of flesh-and-blood brains, but no such limits constrain electronic computers.” > **— Martin Rees**, *Lord Martin Rees: Is there life out there?, The Naked Scientists, 2024* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Electronic Computers Escape the Limits of Organic Brains by Martin Rees|Electronic Computers Escape the Limits of Organic Brains by Martin Rees]] > “[The questions contemplated by electronic superminds] are no more conceivable to us than the things we spend our time thinking about are conceivable to a chimp. I would guess, however, that these minds aren’t on planets. While we depend on a planet and an atmosphere, these entities would be happy in zero gravity, floating freely in space.” > **— Martin Rees**, *Aliens, Very Strange Universes and Brexit — Martin Rees Q\&A, Space.com, 2017* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Electronic Superminds May Outthink Humans Like Humans Outthink Chimps by Martin Rees|Electronic Superminds May Outthink Humans Like Humans Outthink Chimps by Martin Rees]]