Bratton et al. argue in Science that the next intelligence explosion will be plural and social, not a single supermind
bratton · x · 2026-09-06
Benjamin Bratton is re-sharing a March paper he co-authored with Blaise Aguera y Arcas and James Evans for Google's Paradigms of Intelligence group, published in Science as "Agentic AI and the Next Intelligence Explosion."
Key argument: the popular singularity vision — a single titanic mind bootstrapping itself to godlike intelligence and consolidating all cognition into one silicon point — is almost certainly wrong at its most fundamental assumption. If AI development follows prior major evolutionary transitions, the current step-change in computational intelligence will be plural, social, and deeply entangled with humans.
The authors contend the next intelligence explosion is likelier to emerge from mixed human + agent societies than from a monolithic superintelligence.
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