VENICE, ITALY – OCTOBER 16: Noubar Afeyan, Co-Founder of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative in … [+]
We can really understand the world better through the application of AI.
All over the world, there is a sense that we are on the edge of a precipice, or perhaps more accurately, at the foot of a great ladder, climbing to new levels of wisdom and skill.
I was reading a recent essay by Noubar Afeyan on the rise of a new type of intelligence called ‘polyintelligence’ and the context of how we got here.
Afeyan is the founder of Flagship Pioneering who spoke at last year’s MIT graduation. He has some very interesting things to say about the application of history in a new era.
The Polymath Principle
Near the beginning of his piece, Afeyan illustrates how individuals and teams embrace a kind of “renaissance” approach to knowledge, using Leonardo da Vinci as an example.
“The term polymath is apt for his unique intellect: someone with insatiable curiosity, an ability to synthesize information from various fields, and an ability to connect seemingly unrelated concepts to create groundbreaking ideas,” he writes. “Polymath seems to aptly describe only human intelligence, but if Leonardo learned anything, it’s that nature is also intelligent, providing a source of innovation and wisdom.”
Explaining what it means to be a polymath, Afeyan notes the interconnectedness of different disciplines and a unified approach to analysis, and then posits a kind of intersection between AI, human intelligence, and the intelligence of the natural world, or “nature intelligence. “
The history of AI and human intelligence
In the middle of the essay, Afeyan returns to the origins of knowledge—in fact, to the human effort to achieve unified knowledge, in the book of Genesis, and then (much) later, the dramatic rise of computing and all that it represents for the capabilities human.
He specifically refers to the Dartmouth conference in 1956, which I’ve written about in the past as a landmark in the 20th century, pointing us toward the future we’re in now.
Then there is the human genome project in the 2000s, and other stations in this rapidly developing world where we are starting to use the products of LLMs and neural networks as independent cognitive agents.
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A new chapter
“Polyintelligence creates the potential to merge the organic, the human, and the technological,” Afeyan writes, describing the processes of applying AI and human intelligence to life science. “It invites us to reimagine intelligence as a network of connections that transcends boundaries, enabling us to think, create and innovate at a depth and scale that can produce solutions to some of the world’s most difficult and contemporary challenges.”
As concrete examples, he refers to sperm whales and the application of AI to their communications, and I’ve also written about this based on some of the experts I’ve heard at conferences.
Another example is very different and affected our world tremendously. It was the fight for a Covid vaccine as the pandemic ravaged global society.
In his graduation speech, which I heard, Afeyan talks about his work on vaccines at Moderna and how leveraging the latest capabilities led to a faster process to vaccinate people against the dreaded respiratory disease.
This should be an example of why this type of work is important.
He talks about the “impossible mission” and embracing these great tasks, using all the tools that have been disposed of.
The rise of agentic AI
Later, Afeyan also talks about agent workflows, which is front and center in the research many teams are doing right now. I’m hearing about single-agent and multi-agent artificial intelligence systems beginning in 2025. Part of this is about game theory—computers understanding how humans work—but other aspects of it include dealing with complex tasks and the ability to create sophisticated results without human prompting or detailed human supervision.
Speaking of such developments, Afeyan tells us to “buckle up” and talks about “what if” scenarios.
“The ultimate reward,” he writes, “is a collaborative future in which the frontiers of knowledge are continually expanded, reshaping human health, planetary health, and the very nature of discovery.”
All of this is worth thinking about as we move into a new year that will be all about cutting edge technologies and their impact on our world.
