One might have assigned significant prior probability to there being hundreds of sequential hard innovations required for human intelligence, e.g. in brain design. There might have ten, a hundred, a billion. If the hard steps model, combined with substantial remaining time in our habitable window, can lop off almost all of the probability mass assigned to those scenarios (which involve hard intelligence), that is a boost for the easy intelligence hypothesis.
Also, the fewer hard innovations that humans must replicate in creating AI, the more likely we are to succeed.
Thanks, that answers my question. But the hard steps model also rules out scenarios involving many steps, each individually easy, leading to human intelligence, right? Why think that overall it gives a boost for the easy intelligence hypothesis?
If you're interested in evolution, anthropics, and AI timelines -- or in what the Singularity Institute has been producing lately -- you might want to check out this new paper, by SingInst research fellow Carl Shulman and FHI professor Nick Bostrom.
The paper:
How Hard is Artificial Intelligence? The Evolutionary Argument and Observation Selection Effects
The abstract:
Several authors have made the argument that because blind evolutionary processes produced human intelligence on Earth, it should be feasible for clever human engineers to create human-level artificial intelligence in the not-too-distant future. This evolutionary argument, however, has ignored the observation selection effect that guarantees that observers will see intelligent life having arisen on their planet no matter how hard it is for intelligent life to evolve on any given Earth-like planet. We explore how the evolutionary argument might be salvaged from this objection, using a variety of considerations from observation selection theory and analysis of specific timing features and instances of convergent evolution in the terrestrial evolutionary record. We find that a probabilistic version of the evolutionary argument emerges largely intact once appropriate corrections have been made.
I'd be interested to hear LW-ers' takes on the content; Carl, too, would much appreciate feedback.