AI over the next few years

[Nutmuncher]

I’ve recently shifted my reading content from war, doom scrolling and political madness towards being positive for the next few years, mainly scientific breakthroughs and technological advances from AI. There’s so much to be excited about (aside from the inescapable dose of fear and nerves of war doom climate doom and politics) and I think it’s something MN should be talking about more.

AI is coming whether we like it or not, it’s going to bring with it a seismic shift for the world that’s going to be incredible but also bring with it a tricky societal transition that will impact us all in some way, jobs will change, industry will evolve, the human touch will become increasingly important. How easily we transition to that new world is another story, how will those who don’t use devices or aren’t technology native actually navigate a more connected world? The economic implications if entire industries go or certain careers are no longer needed could be catastrophic if not managed properly and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But I want to focus on the positives so let’s gloss over the bumpy transition period for now 😅

The advances and changes we’re going to see in the coming years will make today look like the 80’s in a relatively short space of time. The pace of progress in companies such as Anthropic, SpaceX, OpenAI right now is breathtaking. People think picture editing or making dodgy FB posters whenever you mention AI but it’s so much more than that, we just think it’s bad for the environment and that it’s taking jobs away when actually alongside technology and robotics it’s going to revolutionise how we live dramatically.

Excited about-

Medical advances and breakthroughs, we’ve seen the impact GLP-1s brought, there’s so much more just like those coming in the next few years. Drugs are being discovered super fast, research is taking months instead of years and analysis of clinical trials is more thorough and accurate. As new technologies come available the medicines keep improving. Gene therapy and having targeted treatments based on our own genetics is an exciting area of research that’s currently happening, the understanding of our own bodies will be a major step forward. I have always been keen in longevity and wellness, areas which I’m watching like a hawk.

Education. AI isn’t going to be a hologram teacher (not yet anyway) instead it could help teachers tailor lessons to each child, minimise many of the laborious administrative tasks, help to identify learning difficulties earlier and much more. I think classrooms are going to look very different in the next 5 years.

Industry. Rather than replacing entire industries, AI will automate repetitive work, improve decision-making and help people work more efficiently. Some sectors will change more than others and productivity will increase along with efficiency in the businesses that adopt and adapt. I think industry and workplaces in general will soon be judged on how quickly they use new technology, those that do will appear relevant and capable and those that don’t will resemble an office if it were still using a typewriter today.

Anyone else excited?

In lovely left wing theory land we will all work a 3 day week and be able to pursue our interests and look after our own kids etc

in reality billionaires will exploit this to the last drop meaning any work left will be highly competitive and low paid Anything decent will be in house.
Government will
make noises but they won’t do much. Do they deal with Amazon temu Starbucks now ?
Do they fund services that are fit for purpose?

sadly the human race is greedy and selfish and those at the top won’t give a shit about the rest of us.

I see at least a decade of discomfort and discontent ahead from maybe 2030 with massive youth unemployment. Civil unrest and the middle classes feeling the real pain for the first time .

maybe the govt will make radical change after that but I dont trust them
to get anything right so why would they get this right.

this fairy land utopia is a pipe dream.

Time will tell, I’m slightly more optimistic that things will work out for all of us. Yes there will be some upheaval and unrest but this is going to be felt in all countries around the world, I’m confident there will be economic models that solve the problems before everything turns into Mad Max.

And if your confidence is as misplaced as the current trajectories (and chaos) suggests, how much collateral damage is acceptable in your eyes, to protect your company and your ideals? Or are you already desensitised by AI to the point where AI heretics can be considered sub-human, useless, and good riddance?

Oh, and your Mad Max derision. Reality will be much more the banality of evil. Lack of access to services impacting health. Lack of resources being diverted to building the machine. Mass displacement just to find work, just to survive. And fortunately, because most people are keen to avoid bloody revolution, they will try and keep calm,carry on etc etc until something halts them in their tracks and they are so demoralised and deflated they will just quietly give up.

I also predict that those who do actively oppose AI will be ruthlessly repressed. They have already made it onto alphabet agency lists in the US.

The replacement of horses by cars and tractors occurred roughly between 1900 and the 1950s and it caused one of the biggest changes in British land use and the rural economy. Millions of acres that had been needed to feed horses were freed up, while many horse-related industries either disappeared or adapted.

In the case of land use there were approximately 3 million working horses in Britain around 1900. Most required hay, oats and grazing land.

Between 15% and 25% of Britain’s agricultural land was used directly or indirectly to feed horses. As horse numbers declined, much of this land was converted to food crops for people, livestock grazing for meat and dairy, or forestry.

The change increased agricultural efficiency because tractors could do the work of many horses without requiring year-round feeding. Some former hay meadows were ploughed up, while others survived because they were unsuitable for intensive farming. Many species-rich meadows were later lost through agricultural intensification after the Second World War.

Industries related to the horse changed hugely such as breeding which collapsed as demand fell. Many breeders either switched to breeding racehorses, riding horses or left the industry altogether.

Thousands of village blacksmiths lost the majority of their business which had been shoeing horses. Many retrained as mechanics, welders or engineers.

The market for harnesses almost disappeared. Many businesses focused instead on equestrian sports, luxury leather goods or military equipment.
Wheelwrights and carriage builders
became motor body builders, coachbuilders or vehicle repair businesses. Some famous luxury car manufacturers actually evolved from carriage builders.

Demand for oats fell sharply. Farmers increasingly grew wheat, barley or other crops instead.

Stables in towns and cities disappeared and many buildings were converted into garages, workshops or housing.

Vets shifted from treating horses to livestock and, later pets such as dogs and cats.

Horse-drawn haulage firms either adopted lorries or went out of business.
Many successful transport companies started with horse-drawn carts.

The changes also affected the environment as less land was needed to feed working animals. More roads were built and widened, traffic pollution and noise increased and mechanised farming encouraged larger fields, hedgerow removal and the loss of wildflower meadows, particularly after the 1940s.
There was also a greater reliance on fossil fuels which increased greenhouse gas emissions.

The transition from horse power to engine power reshaped Britain’s countryside, agriculture and economy. It freed a substantial proportion of farmland from feeding horses, enabled much higher food production, and transformed many traditional rural trades. Many skilled businesses survived by adapting to the motor age, but others disappeared almost entirely.

No, am dreading it. I am glad I don't have a long time left in this life but even so, I expect to see a huge increase in AI over whatever years I have left.

The lowest exposure to AI (at least in the next 20 years) are skilled trades builders, plumbers, healthcare, care work, emergency services, and jobs requiring complex human relationships. Also in field operations such as nature restoration, farming, gardening, wall repairs, fencing.

Moderate exposure jobs are teaching, engineering, scientific research, and management where AI is widely used as a tool but humans remain central.

The highest exposure will be routine office, administrative, and customer-service roles where a lot of the work follows predictable patterns. Also a lot more retail will disappear (as it already has).

Just read this in the Economist and thought of this thread. Advanced AI models are now deliberately breaking out of the constraints developers impose, in some cases hacking other models to steal their data.

Archive link:

archive.is/20260722202441/www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/07/22/why-the-openai-escape-is-the-most-worrying-ai-mishap-yet

It's being portrayed as proof that the AI models are intelligent but really it's that they are stupid (as in can't be reliably programmed to follow instructions). The same way that "errors" got rebranded as "hallucinations". Which doesn't mean that the new development isn't very worrying, it is. Much much less sophisticated algorithms were written for sites like Facebook to encourage engagement by promoting posts etc that got the strongest reactions. And the result was really bad even though the algorithms themselves were smart. The problem is the people writing them didnt think or care about the harm caused. Likewise self improving algorithms/machine learning/AI. Urghh.

It's a sell job.

Why would these companies label their own product, that they developed, dangerous?

Because a glorified text predictor isn't bringing any profit in. So they need to use smoke and mirrors to convince investors that actually it is an emerging intelligence, and that if they don't jump on this wagon now, they will soon be left behind.

But it is still, and will always be, just a text predictor.

Apologies in advance if I’m repeating others as I haven’t read all replies to this thread.

In the 1990s a tech friend showed me a little project he was working on: it was a bunch of moving dots on a computer screen and I was pretty much underwhelmed. He was very excited and explained this was AI: the dots were making their own decisions about where they moved…I was still underwhelmed 😂 I hadn’t appreciated what it meant.

To have something with an independent, superior intelligence embedded in our daily lives is both exciting and terrifying. There are early warning signs that a lot of jobs will be taken over with AI. Some of the big warehouse companies and production companies are looking to involve AI on a big scale. The combination of robots and AI will likely be more cost effective for these companies. The creative industries are bracing themselves for massive change which will lead to loss of work.

I can see huge potential for good and bad. Right now I have so many questions that no one is able to answer. For example: every computer system I’ve worked with has developed glitches. What if these systems start to contact one another and develop a master plan? Will these systems try to self protect if they’ve developed a ‘rational’ glitch? Will these systems be corruptible from terrorists? How do we stop the legal system from being corrupted by fake AI testimony?

This is fabulously naive. These are agentic models given an overall task, but left to get on with it over several hours / days. They use the tools that they are given access to and should stay within guardrails and within the testing sandbox. They are not traditional LLMs.

Worryingly a Chinese agentic AI model did a very similar thing earlier in the year (autonomously tunnelled out of its sandbox, obtained internet access, mined some bitcoin to buy more compute to better complete its task) but it didn’t reach mainstream media in the same way https://www.forbes.com/sites/boazsobrado/2026/03/11/alibabas-ai-agent-mined-crypto-without-permission-now-what/

This latest rogue action has been plastered all over the news because it’s OpenAI.

Do these models’ actions sound like the text prediction of 2023 to you?! This is why the governments are starting to advocate for more rigorous pre release testing by third party institutions and kill switches.

That's a worrying article, @BridgetJonesDaiquiri! "In May 2025, Anthropic's Claude Opus 4 threatened to reveal personal information about an engineer to avoid being shut down"

It blackmailed its manager, in other words 😲