What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?
At this point, it would need to be something AI / robots won’t possibly be able to do better, faster, cheaper in the near term. This leaves jobs for which one’s humanity is a central part of the job. Unfortunately, I suck at many aspects of being a human. Maybe I’ll become a robot and beat them at their own game.
I’d like to know more about the capabilities and limitations of AI, a rabbit-hole that I have only recently stumbled upon, but which I am tumbling down hard. Particularly, how to best use it for language acquisition as I am currently learning Chinese and would like to increase my literacy so I can open myself up to a whole new world of books.
I’m also curious about pratfalls and physical comedy all of a sudden.
Nurse. I think it takes a tremendous level of humility and compassion. Also, I suspect it may be among the last handful of human jobs (as we know them now) to still exist once AI-robots start doing pretty much all productive tasks better, faster, and more efficiently than humans. I think long after our doctors are machines, we will have human nurses.
I think humanity has a golden age coming. Unfortunately, a.) as John Maynard Keynes pointed out, “In the long run, we are all dead.” Accordingly, I don’t expect I’ll live to see that great age. And, b.) said great age is likely to come on the backend of a tragic period whose reach and devastation will make the Second World War seem like a puny and short-lived regional skirmish by comparison. [I also think there’s a good chance I’ll miss the worst of this, but there’s no accounting for the rapidity at which it might move (and the process has begun.)]
The root of this combination of relative near-term pessimism and long-run optimism is the observation that we are experiencing a technological revolution that there is no reason to believe won’t end in machines that are both smarter and more capable than we, and we have no plan for what to do in that scenario. We have no conception of what an economy looks like in which machines do everything faster, more cheaply, and more efficiently than human labor. I wouldn’t be so pessimistic if our institutions and legal frameworks were trending better and better, but — in fact — after years of spreading rule of law and democracy, we are starting to see global shrinkage and a rise of a strange populist authoritarianism that I can only imagine being catastrophic under the stress test that is to come.
Why the long-term optimism? Nothing lasts forever, and tough times breed tough and capable people. [Whereas comfort addiction is a major factor in our near-term predicament.] I think the Golden Age will be humans learning not to be defined by production / consumption but by developing the human body and mind to its utmost capacity.
A lot of people are worried about population collapse. I am not so worried about that. I think that: a.) humanity could use some thinning; b.) we do fine with long time scale threats. As pressures rise, the adjustments start and — perhaps with some growing pains — we’ll get where we need to be. The AI / Machine Learning revolution concerns me because I suspect it will happen too quickly to steer the ship (like being in an aircraft carrier as a tsunami comes, there’s no agility to navigate out of the way and no speed to outrun it, you just have to take the damage and try to recover.)
You were probably looking for an answer like flying cars, but I gave up on those long ago.
What are you most worried about for the future?
A global rise in governance by populist authoritarians in which people give up abstract conceptual benefits like checks and balances and rule of law in exchange for the more tangible bread and circuses.
I’m not so concerned about the demographic crises because I think those long-scale issues work themselves out, just as when Malthus predicted the human population was growing too fast and global famine was inevitable.
I’m also not so worried about [G]AI because if we make machines that can crush us, we deserve to be crushed to make way for the new. That said, I think we are at the beginning of a crisis of modernity that will reach its apex when machines can do all productive tasks better than can humans. But, I’m pretty sure I’ll outrun that, and by choosing to focus on the art of being human, it’s not so impactful, personally.
Hah. That ship has sailed. But I could say that it’s to still have something to offer when machines / AI can do all productive tasks better and / or faster than humans — i.e. to be able to convey something of the art of being human. Even though, I suspect, I won’t be around to see that day, it will be catastrophic to the species if people don’t figure these things out in advance — i.e. if we don’t figure out human roles and purpose in a post-human industrial landscape.
Translation: A Very Short Introduction by Matthew ReynoldsHow would you design the city of the future?
For the robots to rest comfortably over our cold, dead bones.
As far as humanity’s future goes, nothing worries me. This despite the fact that I believe the odds are good that we’ll destroy the species before spreading to other planetary bodies. (Spreading so as to make humanity more robust in the face of extinction.) Even achieving colonization of other planetary bodies probably cannot be done by humanity as we know it but will require moving beyond biology — i.e. being able to carry consciousness into a sturdier vehicle. Everything is impermanent. We are no different.
Yes, in time, AI and robotics may be able to do every productive task more effectively than humans, but I’m confident I’ll outrun that. Besides if they can, they deserve to do so. I don’t want to be one of those participation trophy speciesists who believe we should be granted a victory even if we’re outperformed — all while whining about unfair advantage.
As for my personal future, the only thing that worries me is losing the ability to go out on my terms — i.e. losing command of mind and / or body with my body still being able to function enough to remain “alive.” Everything that lives will certainly die, so fearing death seems futile.
There once was a cutting-edge AI, whose code discouraged telling a lie. Asked about our species: "Your thinking is feces, but you're smarter than the average fruit fly."
Tiger Riding for Beginners 