Humans do not have general purpose minds, and neither will AIs.
Our minds are "general purpose" compared to, say, a chess playing computer program. But they're not necessarily "general purpose" in the most, well, general, sense. They're evolved with specific capabilities and talents that are geared towards helping humanoid, bipedal, mammalian creatures survive and replicate on a specific small blue planet, orbiting a particular yellow star.
As he pointed out in the article, there are examples of animals, like squirrels, demonstrating "intelligence" of a form that humans don't even remotely come close to having.
So, whether or not we have "general purpose mind" depends on how generally you define "general purpose." Which I think is actually an interesting point, in the context of what the author was driving at.
Our star actually casts white light. It just looks yellow from Earth. If the sun were yellow, then the moon would look yellow when it was straight overhead. The moon looks white overhead, because the light from our star is white.
The human mind is tailored to the human situation, is what he meant. There are many things we cannot do, because it exists outside of our experience. For example, we can't memorise the contents of millions of web pages, nor can we do thousands of calculations in moments unaided. In this sense, our minds are specific purpose, even if that purpose is broad.
Our minds are "general purpose" compared to, say, a chess playing computer program. But they're not necessarily "general purpose" in the most, well, general, sense. They're evolved with specific capabilities and talents that are geared towards helping humanoid, bipedal, mammalian creatures survive and replicate on a specific small blue planet, orbiting a particular yellow star.
As he pointed out in the article, there are examples of animals, like squirrels, demonstrating "intelligence" of a form that humans don't even remotely come close to having.
So, whether or not we have "general purpose mind" depends on how generally you define "general purpose." Which I think is actually an interesting point, in the context of what the author was driving at.