alt Hacker News> I feel like “giving up understanding” is inevitable
People didn't stop understanding how to do addition or subtraction when the calculator came out. That's a simple example, but if the AI is superhuman, I don't see any reason why it cannot break things down into simple concepts. I don't think anything is truly beyond comprehension; it just needs to be explained properly (by someone, or someTHING that really understands it) and, for complex ideas, time taken to understand them.
> given up on understanding parts of our own systems for the exact same reason.
Maybe this will be a sign of when ASI is achieved. AI researchers keep saying they don't fully understand how LLMs work - maybe when ASI arrives, it can explain that fully.
> That's a simple example, but if the AI is superhuman, I don't see any reason why it cannot break things down into simple concepts. I don't think anything is truly beyond comprehension; it just needs to be explained properly
You should try being a teaching assistant or a tutor. "Everyone can be taught everything, it just depends on the teacher" can only be said by someone who never tried this in practice. Just as not everyone can learn advanced math, the best mathematicians also have their own limits and there are things they won't be able to understand or comfortably navigate. Not just because it's a lot of material, but because it's complex inherently.