Studies of superintelligent-level systems have typically posited AI func-tionality that plays the role of a mind in a rational utility-directed agent,and hence employ an abstraction initially developed as an idealized model of human decision makers. Today, developments in AI technology highlight intelligent systems that are quite unlike minds, and provide a basis for a different approach to understanding them: Today, we can consider how AI systems are produced (through the work of research and development), what they do (broadly, provide services by performing tasks), and what they will enable (including incremental yet potentially thorough automation of human tasks).

Because tasks subject to automation include the tasks that comprise AI research and development, current trends in the field promise accelerating AI-enabled advances in AI technology itself, potentially leading to asymptotically recursive improvement of AI technologies in distributed systems, a prospect that contrasts sharply with the vision of self-improvement internal to opaque, unitary agents. Read More

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