Do we underestimate what's coming?

[Dappy777]

I have become quite interested in AI lately and have been watching loads of Youtube lectures. Some of it is really mind-blowing. What struck me most was a talk given by Stephen Fry in which he said humans are like children playing on a beach and squabbling over the sand and pebbles. Meanwhile, just over the horizon, waves are gathering to form one giant tsunami that is going to knock us flying. His point was that it isn't just AI. Numerous waves of technology – nanotechnology, gene editing, virtual reality, genetic engineering, quantum computing, etc – are uniting. Any one of them on its own could transform the world. But they are going to combine, and in some cases speed each other along (AI could speed up nanotech, for example).

One AI expert thinks we could see all illness and disease brought under medical control within ten years. Even Jeffrey Hinton, who won the nobel prize, thinks AI will wipe out all illness and disease within 20 years. Human ageing may be halted and even reversed!! Another expert thinks that, thanks to regenerative medicine, by the late 2030s 50-somethings will look like 20-somethings. Stephen Fry himself thinks the first person to live beyond 200 has already been born.

Yet we carry on as if the future will be more or less like the present. Is it sensible for a 25-year-old to marry and have a child when we're on the brink of regenerative medicine that could extend her life for centuries (assuming climate change and nuclear weapons and bio-terrorists and hackers and so on don't wreck everything)? My friend's daughter is due to start secondary school in September. They are already wondering what GCSEs she'll enjoy, what A-Levels she might take and what career she'll choose. They are carrying on as if her life will be just like theirs was. But if she goes to university, that will be 2032. By the time she completes her degree it will be 2035. By 2035 AI, nanotechnology, gene editing, VR, quantum computing and god knows what else (not to mention climate change) will have made the world a very different place. There might not be any jobs. Should we be educating children in a completely different way? Do they need to study traditional subjects at all!?? Should we overhaul education and focus on things like empathy, relationships, life skills, meaning and purpose?

The problem, I think, is that ordinary divs like me have zero understanding. For all I know these experts could be exaggerating. Because I'm so bad at science, they could tell me the moon is made of cheese and I'd believe them. The one thing they all agree on, however, is that the pace of change is accelerating. One of them said we'll live through 100 years of scientific progress in the next ten years. Shouldn't we be constantly talking about all this?

Nah someone will unplug it to use the hoover and we will be back to papyrus

Do you think AI will reverse climate change?
Or do you think it will kill off half the population of the world in order to ease overuse of resources?
AI will need electricity. If that can't be produced in enough quantities, it won't be able to do anything at all.
Whatever happens, I am quite glad that I am not a toddler now, life won't be great in 50 years whatever happens.

@Dappy777 sounds fascinating and I agree with you. Any links to videos please that you’ve watched? I love Steven Fry

Some good discussions of AI here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m001wjf8

I'm 63 and asking why the hell would anyone want to even live to a 100 in the current day and age? Even if all these ideas came true, there would be more problems than AI could ever deal with. Who is paying for it all?
If I get to 75, probably won't due to having I have a chronic health life reducing condition which causes many off shoot problems linked to it. I've decided that is my last day on my birthday. I am not going to be here after that.
100th / 200th birthday ? Poke that idea where the sun doesn't shine.

I think you are very believing of what Ai supporters are telling you. Do you think you are applying a really critical eye? Eg medical solutions produced in days rather than years, you still need to do the testing and human trials

A lot of these companies are making exaggerated claims in order to get funding. I also believe AI will fundamentally change life on earth but you seem very accepting of their claims. In my industry (Banking) we've been told AI is the answer to every problem for the last five years But so far there's no major advancement. Advocates of AI tend to look at it in isolation... it can do this! But dont talk about it in context. Eg in my business if we use AI to check docs who owns the liability if it makes mistakes? Me as the bank or the AI provider? Also AI isnt some altruistic good, we already see it being used to forge documents and its hackable.

No one will be paying tax so there won't be any money at all.

Clearly the most pressing issue for society today is dog poo? So I asked chatgtp how we could deal with it, AND voilà, it has solved the problem...

Dealing with people who don't pick up after their dogs can be frustrating. Here are some strategies:

1. Education: Share information about the importance of cleaning up after pets for public health and environmental reasons.

2. Community Initiatives: Organize community clean-up days or provide free bags in public areas to encourage responsible pet ownership.

3. Friendly Reminders: If you know the person, a polite reminder can sometimes be effective.

4. Report: If the issue persists in public spaces, consider reporting it to local authorities or community organizations.

5. Lead by Example: Always pick up after your own pet to set a positive example for others.

6. Install Signage: In parks or common areas, signs reminding pet owners to clean up can be helpful.

7. Engage Local Pet Groups: Work with local pet owners' groups to promote responsible pet ownership.

Would you like more detailed information on any of these strategies?

I'm quite pessimistic about the future because AI is going to take a lot of jobs. The rich will be fine, but they're not going to want to see people being given a basic universal income and those who are unemployed or unemployable are going to be living in poverty and possibly homeless as well. People will have the choice of doing a really basic menial job or being destitute. Only the rich will benefit from nanobots, better healthcare and living to 200. The rest of us are going to be slaves fighting over scraps.

I keep thinking it’s going to be like the terminator films

Good post OP.

Re. education system, you're absolutely correct. Our compulsory education system is already not fit for purpose. The next decade will ensure that it is completely redundant in its present form, and the result won't be good for those already disadvantaged by the current system. Alas, there seems to be no political imagination about what a compulsory education system should or could look like, and those with vested interests (unions, academy businesses) would resist hard.

I do believe AI/Machine Learning can bring incredible advances in medicine and disease understanding but it needs the data. If the data the NHS held was able to be organised and then accessed by machine learning algorithms I honestly believe we would make significant medical breakthroughs. Pattern recognition and neural network algorithms are a simple starting point which aren’t new and handling ‘big data’ is getting better and better. What’s holding us back is getting the data into sensible databases and formats. And humans being scared of using the information!

I’m concerned we’ll let children just be unchallenged if education changes in the wrong way.

And how many jobs there will be. Which is why Amy birth rate policy should take twenty years’ time into account.

So the first one is a good ‘beginner’ one narrated by Stephen Fry and the second link also excellent. You’ll see from the tone, the narration is very logical and not fearmongering at all. It’s quite the eye opener especially how it reveals how much AI has silently embedded itself into our society already. The only thing that gives me any relief about not having found anyone suitable to have kids with is that when I pass at least I won’t have to worry about the kind of world it will have to navigate in the not so distant future. OP makes a very valid point about kids today choosing subjects that they enjoy and are good at when the possibility of those being around by the time they graduate (especially creative/design/coding/accounts/mathematical - even some admin or project management fields) for human fulfilment is highly questionable.

Massively, especially with job. AI is already taking jobs. Stupid people were happy when the tech layoffs started. Its still ongoing. They have built the systems to replace themselves. The ones left are working tirelessly to build the systems to take your jobs.

Perhaps money won't exist. Maybe our whole concept of what it means to be human is about to be redefined.

I work in this field and use AI daily for my work. It complements my role, it doesn’t replace it - but that’s because I’m an expert who has been doing this for 20 years, so I’m in a position to critically analyse and edit AI outputs.

The reason I’m an expert is because I spent my first few years doing for my bosses the grunt work that AI now does for me.

The real crunch in ‘knowledge jobs’ will be entry level work - trainee solicitors, editorial assistants, marketing executives, etc. This is going to be a problem when people like me retire or die, because who will have the experience and knowledge to quality-check and manage AI input in specialised fields?

My feeling as someone working in this field who has no strong feelings in favour of or against AI (i believe it’s a tool, and it’s how we use it that matters) is that the most valuable skills in the workplace for the next five years or so are shaping up to be knowing how to ‘talk’ to AI, knowing how to use AI to augment user experiences, and knowing how to critically interrogate AI output.

This is very much a moving target at the moment, but my educated guess is that the real skills we should be teaching our children are a) things associated with a Classical education that help to create well-informed and reasoned humans, like discernment, fact-checking, critical thinking, rhetoric, philosophy, and logic, and b) practical and artisanal skills. ETA - basically we’re still educating children for a world that is rapidly slipping into the past. We need to be thinking on our feet in terms of what schools, universities and training should be about, from the ground up.

I've lived through decades of hearing that technology is going to change the world. I'm really doubtful of a lot of the claims it makes. I submitted a document that a company was using AI to check and because it wasn't a straight forward check and needed human input and communication, it didn't know what to do. I don't believe it will ever be able to take over processes unless they are simple and repetitive. I certainly don't think they're going to cure diseases.

I remember being told in a tech lecture that when I grew up, we wouldn't have laptops as standard. The screen would be on the wall and we can use our hands to move things around bla bla.

I think a lot of technology is overhyped but it will of course have it's uses. Have a look at what happened to the credit company who switched to heavy AI customer service use and are rapidly bringing back humans...

What is clear is that AI is going to destroy a lot of jobs, make the gap between rich and poor even wider, reduce critical thinking skills of humans and make more of us dependant on the government. It will suck the joy out of life.

Yeh and the tax issue.

I don't think the government will allow this to happen. They can't afford it for a start.

I wonder if companies will be taxed on AI replacements as a deterrent.

Pretty sure when you were a toddler, people were saying the same thing. I've seen articles from decades ago about robots taking over.

I don’t doubt that AI will change how we work over the next 10 years, similar to how email and the internet transformed things but I’m yet to be convinced it’ll take over. Currently it can take meeting minutes but they still need proofing by a human … “we need to add 50 colleague desks to our room planning” translated to “we need to add 50 colleague deaths to our room planning”. It also can’t tell the difference between my identical twins (who are not that identical anymore imo).

I do think education is lacking and not giving dc the skills they actually need.

The UK government is cheering for AI. They don't want to be left behind. Of course AI is not going to take all the jobs. Think more, 2 staff left out of 10.

www.uniladtech.com/news/ai/doctor-explains-ai-taking-over-job-decades-training-610400-20250520

Diary of a CEO did a great debate on this recently, worth looking for on YT.

The conclusion was that we cannot imagine just how much, and how widely, AI will to take over everything. I'm particularly concerned about what that'll mean for people's finance with so many jobs being replaced by it. Its somewhat like a new industrial revolution I guess.