A Knock on The Door.

A near-infinite expansion of brain power.

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1. The New York Times:

Earlier this month, a detective knocked on Shavon Harvey’s door, in suburban Ohio, to ask about her son. The son had sent a Snapchat message from her phone to his friends, saying there would be shootings at several schools nearby.

She rushed to the police station, where her son was already in custody, but the police did not release him. He was charged with inducing panic, a second-degree felony, and officials kept him in detention for 10 nights.

He is 10.

Ms. Harvey’s son is far from the only child arrested this month after similar behavior. And he’s not even the youngest.

In the past three weeks, more than 700 children and teenagers have been arrested and accused of making violent threats against schools in at least 45 states, according to a New York Times review of news reports, law enforcement statements and court records. Almost 10 percent were 12 or younger.

The arrests come as the police and schools confront an onslaught of threats of violence, gunfire and bombings. The reports have terrified students and their parents, caused attendance to plunge and forced the temporary closure of dozens of campuses. Some schools have canceled homecoming parades, middle school dances and Friday night football games. In Georgia alone, 98 students in 56 counties were taken into custody within two weeks of the Sept. 4 attack at Apalachee High School. (Source: nytimes.com, bold mine)

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2. Yet another Silicon Valley billionaire has just predicted that most jobs will be replaced by AI—whether you work on a farm or in sales. “I estimate that 80% of 80% of all jobs, maybe more, can be done by an AI,” famed investor and entrepreneur Vinod Khosla has warned. “Be it primary care doctors, psychiatrists, sales people, oncologists, farm workers or assembly line workers, structural engineers, chip designers, you name it.” Khosla cofounded Sun Microsystems in 1982, before investing in Netscape, the earliest widely-used browser, Amazon, Google and more recently invested in OpenAI. In a lengthy blog post, he detailed how he has spent that past four decades studying disruptive tech and has come to the conclusion that AI will reduce the need for human labor because it will do most jobs better, faster and cheaper. (Source: fortune.com)

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3. Vinod Khosla:

There is a point at which a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind, a wave being different from a tsunami, a typhoon being different from a wind storm. It is likely that AI is different in kind from the previous technological phase changes. The microprocessor, the internet, and the mobile phone were tools for the human brain to leverage and made much of our lives mostly better. But they did not multiply the human brain itself. AI, by contrast, amplifies and multiplies the human brain much as the advent of steam engines and motors amplified muscle power.

Prior to these engines, we relied on passive devices such as levers and pulleys, and animals. We consumed food for energy and expended it in labor. The invention of engines allowed us to convert energy not from our bodies but from oil, steam, and coal, thereby allowing humans to use external non-biologic energy to augment output. This transition improved the human condition in such transformative ways.

AI stands as the intellectual parallel to these engines, albeit likely more impactful. Its capacity to multiply expertise, thinking ability, and knowledge, means over the next decade we can significantly transcend human brain capacity. We’re on the cusp of a near-infinite expansion of brain power that can serve humanity. (Source: khoslaventures.com)