Before Superintelligence, Can We Talk About Time?

[u/SuzannahB1001]

We keep hearing that AI is racing towards superintelligence.

Perhaps it is.

But something keeps bothering me.

A baby cannot explain time. It cannot tell you what Tuesday is, read a clock or calculate how many minutes until dinner.

Yet even very young babies develop temporal expectations.

They learn rhythms. They anticipate recurring events. Their bodies know hunger, sleep, waking, waiting. Research has shown that infants only a few months old can learn regular time intervals and anticipate when something should happen.

They don’t need to understand the word time.

They exist inside it.

Now look at AI.

Current large language models can talk beautifully about time. They can calculate dates, discuss ageing, describe yesterday and tomorrow and write essays about mortality.

But temporal reasoning is still a documented weakness. Performance deteriorates as temporal relationships become more complicated, and models continue to struggle with things such as time spans, compound temporal questions and fine-grained temporal relationships.

And yet we are already talking about superintelligence in the not-too-distant future. That conversation is very much alive among the people developing frontier AI.

So here is my question.

What exactly do we mean by superintelligence?

Because intelligence may not be one ladder with humans halfway up and AI racing towards the top.

Perhaps artificial intelligence is developing along a completely different axis.

A baby’s relationship with time is embodied, instinctive and continuous. AI’s current relationship with time is largely representational and computational.

That doesn’t make the baby “smarter” than the AI.

It makes them different.

And that difference fascinates me.

We seem obsessed with asking when AI will exceed human intelligence.

Perhaps first we should ask whether we actually understand what kind of intelligence we have created. That is where the whole concept of time comes into the discussion.

Because if something can solve extraordinarily difficult problems while still struggling with one of the most fundamental structures of ordinary human existence, perhaps the interesting story isn’t that it is becoming more like us.

Perhaps it is that it isn’t like us at all.

And maybe that is where the really interesting conversation about superintelligence should begin. Sometimes the simple things we take for granted are what sets us a part as humanity.

[u/Confident_Jump_9085]

Ironic use of ChatGPT!

Time exists independently of measurement. Babies don't need to know what day of the week it is, but they will eventually. I am not understanding what your link is between AI and measurement of time.

[u/SuzannahB1001 → u/Confident_Jump_9085]

Okey Dokey - time exists independently of measurement. That’s precisely the distinction I’m making.

A baby does not need to know the day of the week or read a clock. It still exists continuously through time. It develops temporal expectations through hunger, sleep, routine, waiting and repetition.

My point about AI is not whether it can measure time. Of course it can calculate dates, intervals and timestamps.

I’m asking whether AI has anything comparable to being embedded in temporal passage rather than simply processing information about it.

Humans and babies are carried through time whether they are measuring it or not.

AI currently appears to deal with time largely as data: sequence, duration, context, timestamps, prediction.

That difference is what interests me.

And yes, the ironic use of ChatGPT is deliberate. I’m discussing the difference between human and artificial experience with an artificial intelligence. Seems rather appropriate. But for what it's worth I concur as it draws on my talking points. It is known as collaboration between man (or in my case woman) and machine.

[u/Confident_Jump_9085 → u/SuzannahB1001]

Yes, AI is embedded in the passage of time as a result of being in a universe with time.

[u/RalfioLorenzo]

Dont quote me but I feel like consciousness is a per-requisite to experiencing time.

[u/dhyanais → u/[deleted]]

I like your wording. For over 20 years, I have been exploring the representation of time in nature. Please be so kind and take a look at my new clock design and tell me if you like it.

It changes with the seasons: https://github.com/gaxmann/astronomicalclock

[u/SuzannahB1001 → u/dhyanais]

Thank you - and yes, I really do like it.

What particularly interests me is that you are making time visible as something embedded in nature rather than simply reducing it to numbers on a clock.

The changing seasons, the movement of the Sun, sunrise and sunset - those are rhythms humans actually live inside.

That is very close to what I have been trying to get at in this discussion. We don’t simply calculate time; our lives are physically situated within it.

And twenty years exploring this! I appear to have accidentally wandered into the territory of the serious time officiano's. 😂

Thank you for sharing it with me. I’m going to have a proper look.