RE: AI - the ultimate hubristic precipice?
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It was such a great interview at the WEF. I swear I don't know how Elon manages all his responsibilities in a regular twenty-four hour day.
Harari’s knife metaphor is spot-on. The genie is already out of the bottle in regard to AI and our only choice is to decide how we decide to integrate it into our lives—this will make our world lean towards dystopia or utopia.
I've heard Elon made this statement a few times about his vision of the future and this is how I'm chosing to approach it, "I'd rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right". In these waning hours of the final training phase of AI, just before AGI is achieved, all of humanity's hopes, fears, biases, dreams, and aspirations are being directly fed into it and will determine greatly the direction it all takes. I think year will become the dividing line between the pre-AGI and post-AGI eras. It's, honestly, a strange time to be alive. This will such an massive transition that we'll have to rethink what it means to be human. Elon calls it a Supersonic Tsunami.
The thing that worries me the most will be those people who won't to know how to use all the free time and lack of purpose they will suddenly have on their hands. I also don't trust that the sudden abundance will immediately trickle down to the masses—corporations won't willingly give up profit and will take time to adjust to this concept.
I hadn't heard this one, thank you. It's a wise approach, perhaps, though can also serve as a painless placebo. I'm optimistic by nature, so I tend to lean in this direction as well. But also, I'd rather be pessimistic and prepared, than optimistic and fucked. I guess it's a pendulum, can't swing too far in either direction.
oh also this. absolutely. it's something of a (terrifying) cliche to have retirees become depressed and lose purpose in films and so on. but lately, i think a lot about these kids, my brother's generation and even younger. to be robbed of that essential meaning-making moment of your life entirely. of course, a job isn't a meaning, you know i don't think like that, but it is a vector of purpose, of what value I bring into the world. One that's more accessible at a young age than perhaps complex relationships like marriage, parenthood, or other things that help shape your personal meaning.
Second one. It's not that I so much think AI will "take over", but that I doubt the impulses of the gatekeepers.