The evolution of energy and where we get it from are all topics on today's AI Minute.
Transcript
Six thousand years ago people started multiplying the energy they could harness by adding additional sources of power to their daily lives. An ox, for instance, uses about 200 watts of power, so a farmer with an ox could do far more than without one. Five thousand years ago we further expanded our use of energy by adding donkeys and camels to the lineup. Animal-powered machines were constructed that could grind grains and pump water, but there are clearly limits with what can be done with just human and animal energy, both in terms of versatility as well as sheer power.
Just three centuries ago, we invented steam-powered engines that came to replace activities that caused muscle fatigue with activities that caused mental fatigue. Steam power must have seemed like a miracle when it came on the scene. We could take a lump of coal, which contained energy from sunlight that fell on the earth hundreds of millions of years ago, and use that energy to lessen the back breaking toil which was the daily lot for much of humanity.
Think for instance how powerful mechanical power can be. Think of cranes and trucks and tractors and rockets and all of the rest and compare that to the power of a human. If our advances in artificial intelligence are of the same magnitude, what would that look like to have an AI that was as far ahead of a human as our strongest machines are ahead of human capabilities?
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