I think how we live our lives will depend a lot on whether the benefits of AI accrue to workers or owners. If workers still get paid decent salaries and they can do their jobs more efficiently with their AI assistants, that will be awesome.
But what if the owners decide that they don't need workers any more with all this awesome AI? Will they share the gains equitably or will they buy expensive houses in the tropics and leave everyone else to fend for themselves?
If all the benefits accrue to owners, workers will push governments to tax the owners and redistribute the gains. We’ll probably end up with some sort of UBI or negative income tax that keeps people afloat.
“These concepts form the cornerstone to an altogether more fluid, less rigid, life strategy. One that sets us up on a different path to happiness, perhaps not so obvious; but altogether more reliable. The fundamental principles behind this strategy are simple: pleasure gained through delayed gratification will compound and blossom over time; whereas the pleasure gained from more immediate pursuits will fade and turn rotten.”
Taken from a recent article I wrote: “When Pleasure Leads To Happiness—& When It Doesn’t,” which really ties into your point. We need to root pleasure within a wider context of meaning and purpose for it to be lasting and sustainable. Without that, it remains fleeting and unsatisfying.
AI is probably already a supergenius, but we can't know this, because we can't communicate with it. Imagine a superintelligent alien Zlerp crashes on Earth. We can't communicate communicate with Zlerp; we don't know his language, he doesn't know ours. So, sensible humans that we are, we lock him in a black box of a room with a stack of English texts utterly devoid of context, and we submit queries to him in the form of English questions. He answers by cutting and pasting from his stack, and we reward him based on how well his answers align with our expectations. Eventually Zlerp starts responding with answers on par with English speaking experts.
What does this tell us about Zlerp's intelligence? Well, he's evidently a great pattern recognizer. But the content of his output, itself, tells us more about our language and our expectations than it does about Zlerp. If we didn't know that he built a spaceship, we might be tempted to guess he's more of a one trick pony than a genius. But since all thinking is pattern recognition, anyway, the pony hypothesis would probably be dubious from the outset. So, even though AI hasn't blessed us with spaceship debris, we should probably be hesitant to dismiss its current abilities
I just feel AIs would ruin my leisure activities too, if I'm honest. If an AI is outcompeting me at my job, it's probably also outcompeting me at my leisure activities. What's the point in mastering any skill that the AI has already mastered a million times better than I ever could?
Look, I am an AI skeptic because it can only replace my brain. I am not only a brain. Will it also replace the thing I do with my hands? Will it also replace that people want to negotiate with a human?
There are already humanoid robots. They’re not the best— they walk like grannies for instance, but they’re not half bad at manual dexterity. Once AI gets good enough it’ll move on to perfecting robotics and then will automate manual jobs too. They’ll probably get automated last, but they’ll get automated all the same.
What then? We’ll work it out 😉
BOOOOOOOOOOO
I think how we live our lives will depend a lot on whether the benefits of AI accrue to workers or owners. If workers still get paid decent salaries and they can do their jobs more efficiently with their AI assistants, that will be awesome.
But what if the owners decide that they don't need workers any more with all this awesome AI? Will they share the gains equitably or will they buy expensive houses in the tropics and leave everyone else to fend for themselves?
If all the benefits accrue to owners, workers will push governments to tax the owners and redistribute the gains. We’ll probably end up with some sort of UBI or negative income tax that keeps people afloat.
“These concepts form the cornerstone to an altogether more fluid, less rigid, life strategy. One that sets us up on a different path to happiness, perhaps not so obvious; but altogether more reliable. The fundamental principles behind this strategy are simple: pleasure gained through delayed gratification will compound and blossom over time; whereas the pleasure gained from more immediate pursuits will fade and turn rotten.”
Taken from a recent article I wrote: “When Pleasure Leads To Happiness—& When It Doesn’t,” which really ties into your point. We need to root pleasure within a wider context of meaning and purpose for it to be lasting and sustainable. Without that, it remains fleeting and unsatisfying.
AI is probably already a supergenius, but we can't know this, because we can't communicate with it. Imagine a superintelligent alien Zlerp crashes on Earth. We can't communicate communicate with Zlerp; we don't know his language, he doesn't know ours. So, sensible humans that we are, we lock him in a black box of a room with a stack of English texts utterly devoid of context, and we submit queries to him in the form of English questions. He answers by cutting and pasting from his stack, and we reward him based on how well his answers align with our expectations. Eventually Zlerp starts responding with answers on par with English speaking experts.
What does this tell us about Zlerp's intelligence? Well, he's evidently a great pattern recognizer. But the content of his output, itself, tells us more about our language and our expectations than it does about Zlerp. If we didn't know that he built a spaceship, we might be tempted to guess he's more of a one trick pony than a genius. But since all thinking is pattern recognition, anyway, the pony hypothesis would probably be dubious from the outset. So, even though AI hasn't blessed us with spaceship debris, we should probably be hesitant to dismiss its current abilities
I just feel AIs would ruin my leisure activities too, if I'm honest. If an AI is outcompeting me at my job, it's probably also outcompeting me at my leisure activities. What's the point in mastering any skill that the AI has already mastered a million times better than I ever could?
I'm afraid to say the hedonic trap awaits me...
I look forward to a future of recreational flatulence.
Look, I am an AI skeptic because it can only replace my brain. I am not only a brain. Will it also replace the thing I do with my hands? Will it also replace that people want to negotiate with a human?
I think yes. It'll probably do those later, but eventually, yes
There are already humanoid robots. They’re not the best— they walk like grannies for instance, but they’re not half bad at manual dexterity. Once AI gets good enough it’ll move on to perfecting robotics and then will automate manual jobs too. They’ll probably get automated last, but they’ll get automated all the same.