Human Intelligence Is Already Irrelevant. Most People Just Haven't Noticed.

Six months ago I learned something big: I realized that my fear of failure had taken over my project, and that every decision in my company was passing through that filter. I decided to wait, to reflect on why and how it had come to this, and the answer was obvious. I'm only 22, my emotional muscle is a bit atrophied, I demand too much of myself, and I was going through the worst possible personal context; no wonder my ego went looking for refuge in my company.

Basically, I'm neither important within what I'm doing, nor do I know as much as I thought I did, but for some reason I feel compelled to get this project off the ground, because the impact it's going to have on society is considerable. This doesn't invalidate any of the work done this year; in fact, even though none of it has been visible, I expect the leverage from the ground I've laid to be enormous over the coming months, and to let me move forward with dIAry at great speed.

Just a month ago I went back to working on the company full time: I'm going all in. And 23 days ago I started documenting the process of building the company on social media: one video a day of between 3 and 7 minutes, talking to camera without a single cut. This wasn't part of the marketing strategy I had put together for the coming months; in fact I've called it "Phase 0," and it came out of a hunch that if I didn't face my irrational fears, it would be very hard for me not to fall into the same trap again. The only goal was to teach my nervous system that nothing happens if things go badly, with no planning and no fireworks: to detach from the result and, while I was at it, to form a habit around something that's going to be part of my life from now on: being the visible face at the front of this project.

The video I'm attaching to this post is part of one of those videos documenting the process, in which I react to the news we all know about the possible extinction of the human species because of the risks AI labs are taking.

In the immediate future only one thing is certain: change, because of the speed of change, is only going to accelerate. And in a society where everything we believe to be true is wobbling, collective identity breaks, not only because we're going to run out of jobs, but because the entire social infrastructure is built on the value of human intelligence, which has become completely irrelevant, even ridiculous when compared not just with the models of a few months or a few years from now (we aren't even capable of understanding the level of intelligence these new artificial intelligences are going to reach), but with today's models, which are already far superior to any human being in almost any domain within the economic, political or religious system (the three great constructs of our society).

So we have to be able to define who we are beyond logic, but for that we have to learn to listen to the greatest experts on ourselves, who are ourselves; paradoxical, huh? So why go to a psychologist, you'll be thinking. Well, it turns out it can be very painful to accept that we're imperfect, and taking apart the identity we all wear as a mask is the closest thing to death a human being can experience: basically, what's coming is going to hurt.

I know that for this project to work out my ego has to be as separate as possible from the mission, and that every working day has to become a day of enjoyment (because I love what I'm creating) and of devotion to it, because we're going to need pro-human tools to face the great mental health crisis that this monumental technological advance is going to bring. That's what dIAry is: a tool, not an agent, so you can learn to listen to yourself far beyond what you believe to be true about yourself. But anyway, this post isn't an announcement; there isn't even a landing page yet. If it works, great; if it doesn't, here's the company's manifesto.

I understand perfectly well that I may sound like a lunatic, but before judging me I think it would be smart to read the three articles I'm going to publish this week: the first comes out tomorrow, the second on Wednesday and the last on Thursday. In them I intend to explain, with the help of the world's greatest experts in history, sociology, physics, neural networks and artificial intelligence, everything that's happening, the nature of this technology, the irrefutable evidence of where we're headed, the possible futures this leads us to (and yes, extinction is included), what definitely won't change (probably the most important information), why it can't be stopped, and the stance I believe is the smartest one in the face of this scenario.

It would be good if, instead of reading me and my articles / watching the videos I intend to upload to YouTube for each of them (if anyone reads or watches this at all), people went to the primary authors of these ideas, who, I repeat, are the smartest and most influential people on the planet right now. However, if you want to save yourself hours listening to interviews, podcasts, debates, reading books and watching talks at the World Economic Forum, I do recommend you read at least tomorrow's.

These are the main ones: Yuval Noah Harari · Max Tegmark · Nick Bostrom · Demis Hassabis · Sam Altman · Dario Amodei · Robert Sapolsky · Geoffrey Hinton · Elon Musk

Here's a bit more context on each of them and why they matter to the AI situation, because I know this subject is hard to believe, especially coming from a 22-year-old nobody:

• Yuval Noah Harari: Historian and one of the most influential public intellectuals in the world, specializing in interpreting the great transformations of humanity. His relevance to AI lies in analyzing how it can change our intelligence, identity, work and social organization.
• Max Tegmark: MIT physicist and a leading voice on artificial intelligence, philosophy and technological risk. His work connects advanced AI with the big questions about the future of intelligence and humanity.
• Nick Bostrom: Oxford philosopher and a founding figure in the study of superintelligence and the existential risks of AI. Superintelligence became a reference work for understanding the control and alignment problem.
• Demis Hassabis: Scientist and cofounder of Google DeepMind, responsible for some of the most important advances in modern AI; Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024. His authority combines exceptional scientific intelligence with a proven ability to build frontier AI.
• Sam Altman: CEO of OpenAI and one of the people with the most direct influence over the development and adoption of advanced AI. His importance lies less in academic research than in his ability to decide how and how fast this technology gets developed.
• Dario Amodei: Scientist and CEO of Anthropic, one of the leading frontier AI labs. He's especially relevant because he combines deep technical knowledge with a central concern for alignment, safety and the consequences of increasingly capable models.
• Robert Sapolsky: Stanford neuroscientist and one of the great contemporary experts on human behavior, integrating brain, hormones, development, psychology and evolution. For an AI that aims to understand people, he represents an exceptional authority on the complexity of human behavior.
• Geoffrey Hinton: Nobel Prize in Physics and one of the fathers of the neural networks that made today's deep learning revolution possible. His authority is especially singular because he understands from the inside both the potential and the risks of the AI he helped create.
• Elon Musk: needs no introduction.

By the way, for anyone who wants to follow the process from very, very early on, the account where I'm uploading content is called @alvaromolinadiary. Oh, and I'm going to start uploading videos to YouTube very soon too, the account has the same name, @alvaromolinadiary.

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Written in Spanish by Álvaro Molina and first published on Substack (original). English translation with AI. Quotations from English-language sources are translated back from the Spanish unless marked otherwise, so their wording may differ from the original.