Speed

 Speed


We evolved from our early primate ancestors into modern humans over a period of about 7 million years.


Then we walked out of Africa within about 100,000 years and found niches everywhere else on our planet over the next 100,000.


We only began to farm fairly efficiently and consistently about 10,000 years ago, eventually resulting in the human population explosion within the last few centuries.


Brain bioelectrical signals

propagate at about 75 mph (120 kmph). We walk at about 3 mph (5 kmph), run at 6 mph (10 kmph),

ride a bicycle or a horse at around 10 mph (16 kmph), and move on paved roads in automobiles at about 75 mph (120 kmph). We fly in jet aircraft at 500 mph (805 kmph), 6 miles (9.7 kilometers) above the surface of earth, where we heretofore roamed very slowly.


Human reflexes, like a hand being pulled away from a hot stove, are triggered within 50 milliseconds (1/20 of a second). A quick conscious decision takes a minimum of 200 ms (1/5 of a second).


To progress from the first-grade to writing a book on theoretical physics would take a gifted individual about 40 years.


From the time that Leonardo da Vinci imagined a helicopter-like aircraft

to one capable of flying safely with passengers took about 400 years.


Light in a near vacuum moves at over 670 million mph (1.08 billion kmph), in fiber-optic cables 400 million mph (644 million kmph), 

through copper wire 200 million mph (322 million kmph), in silicon chips slightly more slowly, constrained by circuit design.


Based on our lived experience and imprecise memory, we search our brains (process information) at around 65 mph.


Computer based artificial intelligence, trained on all of the digitized output of humanity,

searches at over 200 million mph (322 million kmph).


So, we think at a brain-speed, which is twenty times faster than we walk, similar to the speed at which we drive, and much slower than air travel, inordinately slow in comparison with machine intelligence.


We’d never walk an hour to do a chore that would take only ten minutes by car, unless exercise was the intention, so why wouldn’t we choose to think ten million times faster when we need to, than we are capable of now without machines, if given the means and opportunity?


Speed of processing is why artificial intelligence is here to stay.


We are capable of learning to operate computer based intelligence appropriately, just as we have learned to ride, drive and fly competently. 


There will unquestionably be incidents and accidents, misuse and casualties, along the way, but we are capable of making good human choices, of making AI a force for the good for all of us.



Aubrey Lieberman

7/11/25





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