I think the question of our times is, "Of what use is intelligence?"

I can give you an example from my interactions with people in the space industry.

For the longest time, missions have had a minimum viable skill set problem. The people who become astronauts via (what will be seen as) the classical programs are chosen for their intelligence, adaptability, and resilience.

There's a joke amongst people who've gone through the selection process to become one that the ideal astronaut candidate is an Antarctic shark doctor helicopter pilot physicist.

They're usually subject matter experts in something, and then are given extensive training in everything else. It doesn't matter if you're not a doctor, but if you're going to be more than two days away from civilization, then you're going to learn how to do a tracheotomy for intubation. Because what if it's the doctor who is severely injured?

As long as the crew size is below the size of a small town, there isn't much overlap in expertise, and the amount of knowhow and practical expertise you have to bring to the field is staggering.

AI changes that calculus. You can now give outbound astronauts all of human medical literature, medical equipment, and a specially shaped model that knows the crew, their expertise, and how they did in training.

If the crew doctor goes down, or there is a significant casaulty event, then the crew doesn't have to wait for minutes at a time to get painfully slow instructions from mission control. They can use the machine to augment their training to find creative solutions to the problem with the inventory they have on hand.

NASA has always wanted such systems in play. It's why for the longest time NASA has been spending money on robotic surgeons. But it took these LLMs to make these kinds of missions practical. https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff2000/hm1.htm https://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/what-we-do/research-tasks/...

The speed of light delay made such devices impractical... until now. Astronauts can be the hands or the robots. The machines can provide the specialized expertise. This makes the exploration of our solar system a much more feasible endeavor.

Instead of sending 6 to 10 people, we can send 3 to 5 highly capable people (including a flight surgeon), and augment their expertise with specialized models. AI lets us carry human expertise with us to the stars.