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?

UBI has been trialled in many countries now and its being spoken about seriously but those driving this new tech. It wouldn't make a person wealthy but would cover basics. The question is even if it were adopted what opportunities would exist for people to make additional income?

If AGI and more so ASI comes to pass then out current paradigm completely alters and the UK of 2025 being on its knees with the benefits system becomes irrelevant. AI bosses and companies may well try to avert revolution and their heads on a spike with a fairly meagre in the grand scheme of things UBI, it would also be likely that the cost of consumer good would drop perhaps making a small income sufficient for a good life. Those who owned AI would, if they can keep AI in alignment be powerful beyond all comprehension and that would be pretty concerning. There is plenty to suggest that money is no longer their prime goal, but power.

AI bosses and companies may well try to avert revolution and their heads on a spike.

i doubt they’ll try to avert revolution - they’ll just flee to safer shores. However their escaping the revolutionaries won’t stop the revolution since as history has shown, the revolutionaries then turn on each other.

@Barbadossunset Perhaps but also perhaps not, they also need government spending on infrastructure to support the development of AI.

UBI won’t be anything like a decent standard of living if it ever comes in. It will be basic subsistence level. Inflation will rocket so UBI will become worth even less. Inflation will rocket because wages will have to rise to be worth people working and cover the inevitable massive hikes in tax to pay for UBI. It’s a nice idea in theory but in practice will be a disaster. Look at the damage done by Brown when he started giving away money with his tax credits!

How does housing work under UBI? People can’t get mortgages? And rent with subsidy

How many millions do that and who owns the property. Actually not sure how it would work

One of the main reasons people work hard and save their money is so they can escape the feral underclass. By feral underclass, I do NOT mean the poor. On the contrary, it's the good people on low incomes who are their main victims. I mean violent, ignorant, noisy, anti-social people who get by through a mixture of crime and benefit fraud, and whose teenage children terrorize the neighbours and make everyone's life a misery. Most people will do anything to avoid them, and to avoid raising their kids around them. If AI really does wipe out all jobs and everyone is placed on a UBI, you've essentially got communism. And if everyone is on the same income, anyone can live anywhere, which means you can't escape them.

How does drug dealing work under AI?
Will drugs be grown commercially and controlled and sold under license or will the genes that make human addicts be replaced and we can all become pure temples.

Just seen this thread.

completely agree.

the rise of all these types of technology is both fascinating and terrifying.

i am scared of its power in the future.

we are building things to be more intelligent and efficient than humans.

I’ve always said that the gist of The Terminator will become reality. Funny but deadly serious.

at some point it will become so advanced that it will decide that the human race is purely a hindrance and fight back. I fully believe it could become “self aware” at some point. This is what it’s designed to become.

its really not far fetched.

We'd still need lots of people working, doing all the work that computers/robots can't do, i.e. mostly manual skills and high end professional skills. They'll be the people earning shed loads of cash who can get mortgages and buy houses. Can't imagine UB will be anywhere near enough to save for deposits and fund monthly mortgage repayments - it'll be a pretty low "subsistence" level kind of amount. I think we'd have to have a huge increase in council/social housing for people on UB to "rent" at affordable/low rents

Crime will never be replaced by AI. Drug addicts will continue to commit crimes to fund their habits, and drug dealers/money launderers will continue to profit from them. UB won't be enough to fund drug addictions, so the addicts will have to find money elsewhere, i.e. theft and the black economy.

So no change there. And in your previous post still some people earning top dollar. No change there.

The thought of AI used in war scares me the most

I dunno, seems to me this is all a very Western-centric discussion.

We've got the ability to solve starvation and a LOT of disease already. To massively improve people's lives through education. We just (as a race) choose not to do it. We might want to know how to solve the world's problems, but we aren't interested in doing it.

The world's politics are as much of a threat to AI imo; the aggression of some leaders,(European leaders are preparing for war with an increasingly aggressive Russia); the sway that social media has, certain religious beliefs, the polarization of society and intense stratification leading to less flexibility in the face of the large societal challenges eg climate change. Poor education. Handing our power away to the few - the increased centralization of it. Ai is increasingly a tool in a number of these problems but the biggest threat is the overall will to handle this tool and the others that you mention in a wise fashion.

I am not sure that's why people want to buy their own homes. It's certainly never occurred to me, but I suppose you could have a point. I just think that these days social housing is so difficult to get, and private rentals are ridiculously expensive! Not to mention that with the new rental laws coming in shortly, it's likely that many landlords won't want the hassle and will sell up, so there will be even fewer places to rent.

I am sure with UBI, many people will still want to work so they can afford a better standard of living. If there is mass unemployment due to the advent of AI, administering UBI would be much cheaper than administering UC claims.

A rise in population is to be expected. That mutch I can get my head around. However travelling pre mobile phones and internet, which is something I did in my twenties a lot, is now bewildering to me as in how did I do that?

I watch Race Across The World and but the contestants still rely on good fellow travellers using the mobile phone.

I also remember dial up and starting a computer with C//

@BooneyBeautiful

I am sure with UBI, many people will still want to work so they can afford a better standard of living.

Trouble is that the inevitable much higher taxes on wages (to finance UB) will make it not worth the effort for lots of people, especially if it includes commuting/travel costs, etc., and there probably won't be a tax-free personal allowance anymore. The cost of UB will be enormous, so all taxes will have to rise to pay for it.

Yes, it's interesting to see how they need to rely on finding someone with the internet, but I think a lot of that is because the internet exists now, so fewer options for finding information or booking things without being online and far greater need to book in advance because it's what everyone is doing now, because of the internet.

I did a lot of travelling back in the 80s. Obviously no internet and no mobile phones. But there was lots of information everywhere - lots of leaflets and directories in hotels and tourist information offices/attractions. Lots of street corner ticket offices/ticket stands selling transport tickets, attraction tickets, vending machines on street corners selling street maps, etc.

People tended not to book in advance so you could just turn up to hotels, bus/train stations, attractions, etc., and just buy a ticket there and then. Because life wasn't all internet based, people didn't have to book in advance, plan in advance etc. It was a lot simpler back then!

Yes agree regarding the travel @Badbadbunny . When island hopping in Greece, tickets could be booked in local shops. Tourist information was incredibly helpful as well.

Nowadays local shops have drop off points for parcels (much to the annoyance of the staff working there, they hate it).

Ah yes, travel back in the days when you turned up at a hotel, asked to see the room and if you liked it you took it. Or, if you were arriving late, you might find some hotels in a guide book and give them a ring to get somewhere on your first night. Saved a lot of time reading reviews too! Tourist sites didn't sell out either, you didn't need to book 6 weeks in advance to see that important thing that you really want to see in X town - and of course if you're booking a date 6 weeks in advance, you also need to pin down your travel schedule rather than winging it. It has all got so complicated!

But in this thought experiment, wouldn't medicine, policing, education, social care etc all be largely delivered by semi-sentient AI? So what would all the tax be spent on?

@MoggetsCollar that would be all the water that is needed for AI production. It's an environmental disaster waiting to happen in every town and city.

@placemats yes, I appreciate that.

Yes, but then if there is mass unemployment due to AI, the cost of administering the system as it is now, will also be enormous, even with the help of AI. Also, as another poster says, much of what is now being done by humans such as policing, medicine, civil service in general etc will also be done by AI, so that in turn will reduce the tax bill. We will need AI to calculate the most cost-effective system!

I would be interested to read some of the predictions at the start of the internet - how many came true and how many didn’t - and then of course unexpected or unforeseen consequences.

Very true. We don't need more science. It's a structural challenge.

What we do have though is a democracy and people can raise awareness, speak up, vote etc.