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?

Well...
A cynic might say this is because the AI companies (many of whom are big political donors) are losing money hand over fist and would very much like the government to take over the expenses
Privatise the profits, socialise the costs as they say!

This seems like a staggeringly naive take.

The US will see multiple trillion+ dollar companies exploding all at once, they’re primed for massive economic abundance and both sides of the aisle recognise that. Optimus robots, Starlink, and Tesla products alone will reshape America.

This would be a really stupid solution though. The government would control it to use it in a regulated way, not for profit. Like nationalisation generally.

Genuine question - where are you getting your information?

Elon, that you?

Would you buy AI music or music from an actual artist? People can buy prints of artwork (and do all day long) yet plenty of artists still manage to make a living selling their work. The value of ‘human made’ will be as compelling as Made in Italy is against Made in China for clothing and handbags.

I love AI. I’ve got into making chatbots. I’m a university lecturer and have made an interactive revision chatbot for my students. I’m constantly thinking of new things to use it for at work. Some stuff which used to take me 1-2 weeks to do I can do in a morning now.

Last year I read "The new age of sexism" by Laura Bates which was shocking from the obvious perspective of even more ways to abuse women, but also because it gave me a massive kick up the backside!! I thought I had broadly kept up with the concepts of technological advances but when I read this book I realised that things that I thought were still a decade or two away were already happening (metaverse, haptic full body suits).
Since then I have made a point of informing myself on developments and introducing more tech/AI into my everyday life. I'm only 45, I can't risk falling behind with another 20 years in the workforce.

In the last couple of months I have used AI to apply for a job, I got it to essay plan my personal statement, then proof read/ crtitic what I wrote. I then used the speech interaction to do interview practice which was amazing and a game changer for me who has always struggled with interviews, I must have run through a dozen full length mock interviews, then after I got the job (1 post and a lot of applicants), I then needed to attach a CV to the MSc application that goes with the role, but the orginal job application was an online form, so I downloaded the pdf from the recruitment site, added it to gemini and asked gemini to use it to create a CV, amazing, formatted professionally, lifted my orginally wording and writing style from the application, and done in seconds.

We all have to move with the times, but that is easier for me to say as a work in a very safe profession (healthcare).

Well Rishi tried to get the law sorted to attract AI companies to the UK and it got blocked by fear mongers. There were so many things the conservatives tried to do to improve economic output and reduce things that are draining the treasury and they were stopped at every turn by wankers who think the government is just a place where they get paid to filibuster and argue black is white. If the government tries to bring big business here and stop excessive immigration because we’re not the world’s fixers, and useful idiots in opposition and on the street are allowed their stupid protests like stopping wind farms and data centres and burning down 5G masts, and other things that kill industry, then people can’t bleat that the economic output is so poor and that there are no jobs due to AI really.

We learned about the Luddites in a gently mocking sort of way, but nowadays I’m thinking they had it right. I’m still doom scrolling climate change and it seems AI isn’t exactly helping, given the water needs and heat of the data centres. I sometimes feel like all humans do is accelerate our decline and AI is another step in the same direction.

So dismissive. It''s just not true that everyone in creative arts will be safe. It's happening already, and it's going to get worse.

There’s a lot of podcasts on YouTube but also plenty of articles around at the moment once you pick beneath the usual war, Ebola, Burnham headlines. Be curious and take a look, it’s eye opening.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20260309-ai-is-finding-treatments-for-incurable-diseases

https://www.reuters.com/science/anthropic-unveils-claude-science-ai-platform-scientific-research-2026-06-30/

https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/elon-musk-says-teslas-model-173051395.html

https://www.diamandis.com/podcast

https://www.alexwg.org

No, unless you are a millionaire it’s a terrible thing.
Where will you get purpose in life? withdraw your universal basic income and do what exactly? I think our air and water quality will be even worse. The far distant future is very dystopian in my eyes, thankfully not in my lifetime but I worry for my child and her children if she has any.
I think AI will mean less humans, maybe that’s no bad thing actually, but I think it’ll wipe out nature too.

I really am excited to see the changes that AI will bring. However I am not for a second believing that this new tech and home robot helpers will free us up for additional leisure time. If I can do my job twice as fast, I’ll just be expected to do twice as much in the same time. I won’t recover any of that time for myself.
I am a teacher so already seeing the benefit of using AI to lighten my workload in terms of prep and resources. I’ve even coded an app to assess children’s writing which saves hours of work per child. All this means is though that my headteacher expects more output from me in the same amount of time!

A 3rd of jobs are going to be lost to AI, and unlike in previous generations, there aren’t going to be jobs to replace them.

Communication skills are going to cease to exist. We will be raising a generation of children incapable of reading, writing, communicating at all, not even formulating their own sentences because all they have to do is get ChatGPT to write what they want to say.

The top artists on Spotify are already AI generated.

You won’t be engaging with people in call centres, shops etc any more it will all be AI. In fact likelihood is that shops won’t exist because everything will be delivered, by driverless vehicles.

And that’s exciting how exactly?

Same. I realised I’d soon be like the elderly relatives in my family refusing to get onboard with tech, in the 90,s and 00’s you could get away with it because there was a duality between digital and analog and whole generations of landline users. Now, it’s a whole other beast, adapt or be left behind and that’s coming from a digital native who always had the latest gadgets but hadn’t until recently embraced the benefits of AI. Simply because I just thought crappy videos and robot voiceovers when actually it’s a pretty incredible technology that when used to augment what you’re doing actually makes a difference.

There won’t need to be teachers. Children won’t need to learn any more.

Other industries and creative opportunities will emerge, who knew influencing would be a viable career twenty years ago, look at it now.

The human connection will become more valuable, people won’t need to work 40+ hours per week to do their jobs, they’ll have time to socialise, be active, spend time with their families. If they choose to spend that extra time addicted to a device that’s on them but plenty of people will take the opportunity for that balance.

Shops will still employ people but maybe not working night shifts stacking shelves or cleaning floors.

Humans are fairly resilient creatures and if technology is used in the right way then I think we should be ok. If we eradicate as many preventable diseases and have amazing therapies and treatments for all then society will be all the better for it. Yes there will be a bumpy transition but ultimately what’s to come after that period should be great.

“A 3rd of jobs are going to be lost to AI, and unlike in previous generations, there aren’t going to be jobs to replace them”

where did you get this information from?

AI is being over hyped and expect the bubble to burst like the dot.com bubble.

It is just another bit of computer programme written by humans who will control the answers/output

Of course children still need to learn. Learning is not just regurgitation of knowledge. It’s building skills. The internet didn’t stop children learning, it just changed how we search for information. Research on iPads now instead of encyclopaedia.

Yes technically you could have fully online education for older children but what about in the early years? Young children need skilled adults to facilitate development - social, physical, emotional. That can’t be done by AI.

Come back to this comment in 12 months.

99% of the content on TikTok is now AI generated. Influencing is a thing of the past. Or it will be in five years time.

People won’t be socialising because they won’t have money, because they won’t be employed. They’ll be on a universal basic income.

Although on the plus side Ford have recently ditched AI in favour of humans when it turned out that AI technology couldn’t achieve what the people could in engineering terms.