noogenesis: where human intelligence ascended, machines now descend

We must design intelligent systems to interact with humans at the appropriate level of abstraction for each interaction.  Machines must communicate in the medium most appropriate for the message. 

The evolution of intelligence in humans is being mirrored by the expression of intelligence by machines. Noogenesis appears to be on a logarithmic timeline that bends back on itself. It took 200,000 years for human intelligence to shift its leading expression from form → voice → image → text → logic; digital machines have moved back down the abstraction ladder from logic → text → image → voice → form in a single lifetime.

Noticing the pattern of how intelligence evolved in humans and was then built in human machines carries deep implications. This is not merely a fun quirk of history, it is a word of caution and a call to action.

Proto-humans lived in an environment of pure form, Paleolithic hominids used rocks and sticks shaped for purpose. Homo sapiens – humans – are literally defined by the emergence of language, the ability to verbally communicate.  Artistic objects and figurative art appear next, bringing visual expression to our cultural capabilities.  Eventually graphical writing emerges, using visual abstractions first to represent counting and then things and words.  Simple symbols have shared linguistic meaning. Soon pictograms become logograms and then phonograms and eventually an alphabet emerges.  Speech is now expressed as writing, a linear format that facilitates sequential communication of ideas.  From this logic emerges, mathematics, science, and philosophy flourish as writing helps ideas be developed and shared with linear thought.

Humans begin to build machines that themselves express sequential thinking mathematics, calculators and analytical engines.  Digital machines are built on fundamental mathematics, early interactions were solely numerical.  Soon text interfaces were added, assembly and autocode and fortran – interaction was at the command line, text and a blinking cursor.  Then graphical interfaces were developed to make the machines accessible, screens filled with visual expressions of ideas. Voice interactions matured soon, reaching broad adoption through voice assistants.  When LLMs matured to become broadly adopted AIs they followed the same reverse path of logic to text to images to increasingly voice and gesture based interactions.

At each stage of de-abstraction we should realize the machines are interacting with deeper, more fundamental aspects of our evolutionary biology.  A voice interaction functionally bypasses the neocortical engagement with text as a logical, visual abstraction of language.  It leaves us more vulnerable to credulity, less engaged with our critical thinking faculties. The machine that talks in maths interacts with our most evolved, most cognitively engaged selves. The machine that speaks aloud and shares emoticons is addressing your inner hominid.

Use text to engage critical thinking where reflection and consideration matter. Use graphics to communicate quickly and easily. Reserve voice for interactions of limited consequence. Do not blindly chase intuitive convenience, sometimes friction is a feature and not a bug.

We are building angels, let us make sure they address our better natures.

the evolutionary timeline of human & machine intelligence

HUMAN FORMS

2,000,000 BP - Paleolithic   [Form / Australopithecus]

Proto hominids Australopithecus, Homo Habilis, & Homo Ergaster use stone tools and social interactions like modern apes, but do not evidence use of language morphologically or socially.  Form, gesture, basic sounds dominate.

2,200,000BC Oldowan tools (Africa)

2,100,000BC Loess Plateau (China)

1,800,000BC Dmanisi (Georgia)

1,500,000BC Acheulean tools (Kenya, Pakistan, China, Ukraine)

HUMAN VOICES

1,000,000 BP - Speech   [Homo Erectus]

Homo Erectus in paleolithic era creates a wide range of stone tools and tames fire. Many anthropologists believe Erectus establishes the first hunter-gatherer social societies as well as proto-language necessary to mediate social interactions.  Collective learning begins.

600,000 BP - Brain encephalization. (Brains in Homo species get way bigger than are typical in other animals.)

300,000 BP - Language   [Homo Sapiens]

Middle stone age: Homo Sapiens emerges with complex language, complex tools, complex societies. Emergence of oral history, voice as primary means of interpersonal exchange.  Estimated from linguistic diversity studies.  Commence Out of Africa II for H. Sapiens.

315,000BC Jebel Irhoud (Morocco)

260,000BC Florisbad (South Africa)

195,000BC Omo Kibish (Ethiopia)

160,000BC Herto (Ethiopia)

100,000 BP - Brain globularization

Varieties of Homo Sapiens start to co-stabilize into a single synapomorphy of a round head, big brained species.  Modern humans. Biological parietal bulging (orientation, attention, perception, planning, visuospatial, self-awareness, memory, numerical processing, tool use) and cerebellar bulging (coordination, spatial processing, language, social cognition, affective processing).

100,000 BP - Burial rituals

300,000BC Atapuerca Spain (disputed)

130,000BC Krapina Croatia (Neanderthal)

100,000BC Qafzeh Israel (Homo Sapiens)

  50,000BC African & Australian ochre burials

HUMAN IMAGES

70,000 BP - Aesthetic expression

[1,500,000BC Acheulean hand axe symmetry]

80,000BC Grotte des Pigeons ochre, nassarius shell beads (Morocco)

70,000BC Blombos cave ochre, nassarius shell beads, tools (South Africa)

65,000BC Maltravieso cave hand stencils (Spain, Neanderthal)

60,000BC Neanderthal melodic flute (Cerkno, Slovenia)

60,000BC Diepkloof Shelter engraved shells (South Africa)

40,000BC Maros cave hand stencils (Indonesia)

39,000BC El Castillo cave red sphere (Spain)

30,000BC Altamira cave dot markings (Spain)

10,000BC Cooper Bison Kill skull painting (Oklahoma)

40,000 BP - Figurative art

40,000BC Vogelherd figurines (Germany, oldest figurative)

37,000BC Lion-man figurine (Germany, oldest zoomorphic representation)

37,000BC Venus of Hohle Fels (Germany, oldest human representation)

36,000BC Maros cave babirusa image (Indonesia, oldest painted figure)

32,000BC Chauvet cave paintings (France)

30,000BC Bhimbetka cave paintings (India)

28,000BC Nawarla Gabarnmung cave paint (Australia)

27,000BC Venus of Dolni (Czech, oldest ceramic art)

25,000BC Venus figures (Europe)

20,000BC Lascaux paintings (France)

20,000BC Xianren cave pottery (China)

14,000BC Jomon pottery (Japan)

  9,000BC Lapo de Santo rock art (Brazil, oldest New World art)

30,000 BP - Animist artifacts (fetish / totem)

The emergence of religious cultural artifacts indicate the arrival of the first manmade-created objects that carry power. These likely are the first human artifacts to be imbued with agency.

35,000BC Venus figurines (Germany, Austria)

20,000BC Lascaux paintings (France)

  9,500BC Shigir Idol (Russia, oldest wood sculpture)

  9,200BC Göbekli Tepe (Turkey, totem poles & temene)

20,000 BP - Numerical representation 

18,000BC tally bones (Congo, Swaziland, Czechoslovakia)

  8,000BC Mesopotamian counting beads, impressed clay tablets

12,000 BP - Neolithic period

Beginning of agriculture, domestication of animals, emergence of tribes, then cities & states, inventions explode.  Modernity.

HUMAN TEXTS

8,000 BP - Proto-writing

6,500BC China (Jiahui symbols)

5,200BC Greece (Dispilio tablet)

5,000BC Serbia (Vinča symbols)

3,500BC Mesopotamia (Kish tablet in Uruk)

3,400BC Egypt (Naqada III, Scorpion I tablets)

3,100BC Pakistan (Kot Diji pottery)

1,000BC Mexico (Cascajal Block, Olmec)

7,000 BP - Proto-science: copper & bronze metallurgy

6,000BC Copper smelting (Serbia, Israel, Egypt)

4,500BC Bronze smelting (Serbia)

3,000BC Bronze in Egypt, Mesopotamia

2,000BC Bronze in China

6,000 BP - Mathematical writing

3,500BC Indus Valley  (Pakistan)

3,000BC Egypt

5,000 BP - Graphical writing

2,600BC Sumer/Mesopotamia Cuneiform (pictograms, later logograms)

2,600BC Egypt Hieroglyphics (pictograms, later logograms, later phonograms)

2,500BC Crete Minoan Linear A (ideograms, phonograms)

1,300BC China Oracle script (pictograms, later logograms)

  500BC Mexico Zapotec & Isthmian script (logograms, phonograms)

4,000 BP - Religious texts

2,400BC pyramid texts

1,700BC Vedas

3,500 BP - Alphabetic writing

1,500BC Phoenician Alphabet (Semitic alphabet, parent of all alphabets)

  400BC Dead Sea Scrolls 

3,000 BP - Iron Age

1,200BC Smelting (Africa)

  500BC Iron casting (China)

HUMAN LOGIC & MATHS

2,500 BP - Logic, science, philosophy

The linearity of writing begets linearity of thinking, e.g. if this, then that follows.

500BC India (Gautama, Panini) 

500BC Greece (Thales, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle)

500BC China (Hundred Schools of Thought)

2,000 BP - Axial Age

800-300BC major “modern” religions take shape (monotheism, etc)  [influences logic, philosophy]

1,300 BP - Algorithms, Algebra

800CE Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi (Iran)

1,000 BP - Moveable type

1041 Bi Sheng moveable type (China)

1377 Jikji [Korean Buddhist] (Korea)

1450 Gutenberg Bibles (Germany)

600 BP - Scientific revolution

300 BP - Enlightenment

MACHINE LOGIC / MATHS

350 BP - Computing machines

1645 Pascal’s calculator demo

1673 Leibniz wheel

150 BP - Programmable machines

1801 Jacquard loom

1830 Babbage Analytical Engine, Lovelace machine algorithm

1850 Boolean algebra, digital logic

1889 Hollerith punch card machine

75 BP - Digital machines

1936 Turing machines defined 

1940 Zuse digital programmable computers Z1, Z3, Z4 (theoretical)

1943 Colossus & ENIAC computers

MACHINE TEXTS

60 BP - Text interfaces

1947 Assembly language

1952 Autocode

1957 FORTRAN

1965 command line interface

MACHINE IMAGES

35 BP - Graphical interfaces

1963 Sketchpad

1968 Mother of All Demos

1973 Xerox Alto

1983 Apple Lisa

1984 Apple Macintosh

1985 Microsoft Windows

MACHINE VOICES

25 BP - Voice interfaces

1962 IBM Shoebox

1970 CMU Harpy

1975 Hidden Markov Model recognition

1989 Apple Voice Navigator

1990 Dragon, AT&T systems

2001 Lernout & Hauspie in Windows XP

5 BP - AI in Language

2011 Siri on Apple iPhone 4S

2011 IBM Watson on Jeopardy!

2012 Google Now in Android 4.1

2014 Alexa on Amazon Echo

2014 Cortana on Microsoft Windows Devices

2016 Assistant in Google Allo & Android Devices

2017 Bixby on Samsung S8

2023 Humane AI pin

0 BP - AI in general expression

2020 GPT-3 (text)

2021 DALL-E (image)

MACHINE INTELLIGENCE IN FORM

-5 BP - Embodied AIs: ambient computing, humanoids, wearables, totems – the things we must build well to do good.