An anthropologist will not excitedly report of a newly discovered tribe: 'They eat food! They breathe air! They use tools! They tell each other stories!' We humans forget how alike we are, living in a world that only reminds us of our differences.
From Eliezer Yudkowsky
We tend to see individual differences instead of human universals. Thus, when someone says the word 'intelligence,' we think of Einstein instead of humans.
Since the rise of Homo sapiens, human beings have been the smartest minds around. But very shortly - on a historical scale, that is - we can expect technology to break the upper bound on intelligence that has held for the last few tens of thousands of years.
I am a full-time Research Fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a small 501(c)(3) public charity supported primarily by individual donations.
My parents were early adopters, and I've been online since a rather young age. You should regard anything from 2001 or earlier as having been written by a different person who also happens to be named 'Eliezer Yudkowsky.' I do not share his opinions.
Though I have friends aplenty in academia, I don't operate within the academic system myself.
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