Artificial Superintelligence, AI systems that are more intelligent than humans across every domain, may or may not be coming soon
What could we do to prepare now for a future where it has arrived?
I have been considering:
- starting local community groups
- updating my investment strategies to be more resilient to market disruption
- diversifying personal income streams
- staying up to date with the latest news and learn to better use the latest tools/technology
- upgrading personal skills towards the harder to replace industries
It’s a bit difficult to imagine a truly “safe” way of life. Barring UBI and more progressive taxes it seems like it may be quite challenging for the average person to exist comfortably.
Some industries that are already impacted at the level of technology we already have
- programming
- ui design
- creative writing
- technical writing
- customer support
- graphic art
- data analysis
I think almost every other industry is at risk of significant disruption. A capitalism based society will always stray toward the cheapest option, “if AI can take customer support calls for $1/day and customer satisfaction doesn’t dip, why would I pay a person $150/day?”
Until humanity unites there is no ‘we’ who can do anything. We are currently too busy polarising, fighting and reinforcing poverty. If AGI ever arrives, it’ll most likely be weaponised or used to make rich people richer.
If ASI runs out of control, we can only hope it’ll be a nice god and doesn’t immediately see humans are a disease and try to kill us off.
It’s, at this point, hubris to assume AGI/ASI wants anything to do with us.
More than fair, how much effort do we put in to make sure the ants have a comfortable life? Or even further, the tardigrades? I am on the optimistic side, hoping that a superintelligence holds a benevolent nostalgia/amusement for sentient life if it does indeed come to that.
There’s a chance that asi doesn’t happen and we stall indefinitely on a simple token prediction system, in which case the disruption could be limited to what we’ve seen already?
I am in the hopeful side. Maybe an ASI can quickly analyze our issues and interfere. ASI might spit out any plans to improve everyone’s life but if the people in power ignore all of the advice because they’ll no longer be in power, nothing will really change except now there’s an ASI using huge amounts of electricity.
Considering how everything’s going, I honestly think an ASI won’t make anything worse happen than the current state of affairs.