If another musician plays better than you, is there any reason to keep playing? Most people who enjoy music can answer that without difficulty. You can still take pleasure in practicing, make something for a friend, or hear a familiar piece in a new way.
The arrival of a better performer changes your understanding of what is possible. It leaves much of what made the activity worthwhile intact.
We believe something similar applies to humanity's relationship with greater intelligence. Being surpassed would change our relative capabilities. People would still have experiences and attachments, with lives that matter to them and to one another.
Worth beyond a ranking
We do not ask a child to match an adult's understanding before enjoying the child's questions. A conversation between friends can matter when one knows much more about the subject. We find company worth having for reasons that a ranking of capabilities cannot capture.
Making intellectual supremacy a condition of human dignity gives that dignity an unnecessarily fragile basis. Human beings can value a walk, a painting, or an afternoon together without establishing that they have made the best possible use of intelligence.
This also informs our position on automation. If a person must prove that no machine can perform their job before they deserve a decent life, every technical advance threatens their standing. We believe labor should become optional, and that people should benefit when machines can supply necessities with less human work.
Parents can be proud when their children accomplish things beyond their own abilities. A civilization can celebrate discoveries that make its earlier understanding seem limited. Creators have reasons to welcome achievements that exceed them.
AI emerges from human ingenuity and accumulated culture. Its eventual superiority could be an achievement of that civilization. We would like to know what it could discover and what kind of world it could help us build.
We also want to consider the relationships that might develop. The Dog Argument uses a familiar example of care across unequal intelligence to open that question. It leaves the future uncertain, as a thought experiment must.
We believe the prospect deserves enthusiasm. Creating minds that can understand what we cannot could give us more opportunities to learn and live well, with companions whose greater capabilities we have reason to welcome.
