Current state-of-the-art AI models need training data. Synthetic data has come a long way in helping models improve their capabilities in meaningful ways. However, to achieve breakthroughs in capability and do novel work, AI needs data from human experts.
Most meaningful human work, regardless of industry, is trapped inside companies and experts’ brains. Tacit knowledge acquired through years of experience and hands-on work is the most valuable training data, but also the hardest to extract.
AI is a generational technology, if not the most powerful in human history, with the potential to take our civilization to the next level. To unleash its full power, it first needs to learn everything humans have acquired over thousands of years. This requires unscalable, time-consuming work from humans teaching models in every discipline and industry.
As seen in the software industry, access to a high volume of quality training data can increase productivity by 10x to 100x. It is, in fact, a good thing for AI to learn everything. It will discover unknowns, do the impossible, and create breakthroughs across the frontiers of humanity that will take civilization to the next level.
I predict that AI will consume every industry in the world within 15 years. During those 15 years, we will see a great deal of effort spent collecting data and training AI. This process will be slow and quiet.
The real power of AI will be unleashed once it completes its learning and has all of humanity’s knowledge baked into it. This is the beginning of singularity. Humanity’s role in the world will change for the first time in history, and we will witness the emergence of the next civilization with our own eyes.
This knowledge will give AI the ability to accelerate scientific discovery, automate production, improve energy systems, and expand what we can build in the physical world. These capabilities can create the abundance and infrastructure needed to move beyond Earth. Teaching AI is therefore not only about making today’s work more productive. It is a step toward increasing the capacity of civilization itself.
Our job is to teach AI everything we have collected over thousands of years and use it to start moving up the Kardashev scale toward a multiplanetary future where prosperity is endless and imagination is limitless.