AGI isn’t coming in the next thirty years. Neither are Moon or Mars colonies, or starships. Or immortality. Or nano-assemblers or ems. Cities won’t be flooded due to CO2, a nuclear war won’t devastate civilization, aliens won’t arrive in the skies, and a religious jihad won’t remake culture. The rates of change in the economy, lifespans, fertility, automation, and non-carbon energy will stay about the same. Quantum computing, 3D printing, and crypto-commerce will grow but remain small. There won’t even be that many flying or self-driving cars. So if you are looking for science-fiction-level excitement re dramatic
My previous post was lost, but I was originally intrigued by this site due to its name, "overcoming bias". When I read this article, I almost spat out my coffee. Do you have experience or knowledge in AGI/ASI? I am curious because our company sees AGI/ASI a reality within 10-20 years. I actually work for a company that is on the forefront of AGI/ASI. I know I am assuming most people's position, but I think most people think when a technology becomes a reality, it will automatically transform the landscape within a few months. Take a look at the internet / arpanet. One of the most influential technologies this century. It didnt transform the world in a year, hell, it took years and years of constant development. Just like when 5g becomes mainstream. Its not going to transform everything just like that. It takes years, sometimes decades for it to be mainstream. In the meanwhile people will jump and become overly excited and create what humans usually do, a giant boom and bust cycle. Much like the advent of the internet, it caused a dot com boom and bust cycle. Then after a decade it becomes mainstream. Most companies in the dot com era did not survive. Most people jumped head first into something because it was new and shiny causing the market to rally and bust. This is just human behavior and the naysayers would come and say see, the internet was just a fad. These are the people that couldnt overcome their bias.
I forgot to add, "Necessity is the mother of invention". The push for AGI/ASI is based on digital supremacy. The cold war, spacerace 2 and quantum supremacy lies between 2 major factors; Need to survive and the need for hegemony (or world domination). Right now, we live in a time of western hegemony, or should I say white hegemony. There are threats to that, with the main one being China/Russia (from a western perspective; I'm not going to go into this as a lot of other parts of the world think the opposite). I think you can figure out the rest. If you look at the past, the most impactful 'mother of inventions' were due to necessity for hegemony. Creation Internet / Arpanet, Nuclear power, Space technology (satellite surveillance), portable cameras and recording devices, and such. We are witnessing a new wave of tech and I think you really underestimate what people are capable of and how fast we are able to solve problems.
“As jobs will less force people to move, people will move areas less often, and the areas where people live will be less set by jobs.”
I only agree with 2/3 of this. Jobs will less force people to move, but that doesn’t mean they will move less. More the motivation for where and when people will move will change.
Before remote work, young people would often/easily move early in their careers to take the best job. As they age, it becomes harder to get them to move for a job as they weigh staying in the same location more and more. A job can be a “push” factor forcing people to move, but it can also be a “stick” factor in forcing people to stay.
I think the same thing will happen with remote work, but for different reasons. The younger population will continue to move frequently (for the reasons outlined in the article), and eventually will find a place to settle.
Whenever I see today's influencers gather followers on the new mediums, from Twitch to snapchat to TikTok, I wonder if this compound skill of acting, editing, and producing short viral video going to be a critical leadership skill in a remote workplace led by Gen Z managers.
Any good papers you'd suggest on the hard problems in neural prosthetics? I wish I could find the paper, but I recall reading that the brain can learn to activate a single neuron quite specifically (suppressing its neighbors). If there's that much control and plasticity, then even with just a couple thousand neurons that's quite a symphony.
"full immersion" on the other hand seems much further off. Still, there could be many early applications on the control side perhaps.
Fascinating stuff. I've long enjoyed your work. Have you ever written on how to resculpt government spending on medical research to achieve a result more Medician and less Soviet?
Super cool modernista projecting, RH, and I agree with you that our medical progress is glacial (despite the cheerleading media). Love to see more of your insight as to why that is.
Because of their stronger social solidarity, local areas dominated by family and informal social ties seem better suited to provide social insurance, such as medical, retirement, and unemployment benefits. But if so they should arrange for global reinsurance, to deal with risks that could hurt whole areas together. And firms might resist, having long offered social insurance to induce worker loyalties.
So I wonder will this for example allow the southern Europeans to catch up to the northern Europeans?Will it make societal trust less important?
How do you think. this will impact the future of travel (as in air and ground travel)? I can imagine two opposing effects in business related travel.The obvious one is that, since many things can be done remotely, people travel less often for business. The second one is that, since a lot more people live far from work, many more people travel for work on a regular basis, to conduct business that is better done in person (for whatever reason).I can imagine, for example, people traveling every other week to a physical office, and working remotely otherwise.
What's fun is we'll be able to determine who is right. Just make sure to reconcile reality with your prediction and learn from it as time goes by.
How does one predict whether an infant "Chinese Revolution" will die in childhood?
Are you sure cities won't be flooded in 2050?
I've long been pretty skeptical. eg https://www.overcomingbias....
My previous post was lost, but I was originally intrigued by this site due to its name, "overcoming bias". When I read this article, I almost spat out my coffee. Do you have experience or knowledge in AGI/ASI? I am curious because our company sees AGI/ASI a reality within 10-20 years. I actually work for a company that is on the forefront of AGI/ASI. I know I am assuming most people's position, but I think most people think when a technology becomes a reality, it will automatically transform the landscape within a few months. Take a look at the internet / arpanet. One of the most influential technologies this century. It didnt transform the world in a year, hell, it took years and years of constant development. Just like when 5g becomes mainstream. Its not going to transform everything just like that. It takes years, sometimes decades for it to be mainstream. In the meanwhile people will jump and become overly excited and create what humans usually do, a giant boom and bust cycle. Much like the advent of the internet, it caused a dot com boom and bust cycle. Then after a decade it becomes mainstream. Most companies in the dot com era did not survive. Most people jumped head first into something because it was new and shiny causing the market to rally and bust. This is just human behavior and the naysayers would come and say see, the internet was just a fad. These are the people that couldnt overcome their bias.
I forgot to add, "Necessity is the mother of invention". The push for AGI/ASI is based on digital supremacy. The cold war, spacerace 2 and quantum supremacy lies between 2 major factors; Need to survive and the need for hegemony (or world domination). Right now, we live in a time of western hegemony, or should I say white hegemony. There are threats to that, with the main one being China/Russia (from a western perspective; I'm not going to go into this as a lot of other parts of the world think the opposite). I think you can figure out the rest. If you look at the past, the most impactful 'mother of inventions' were due to necessity for hegemony. Creation Internet / Arpanet, Nuclear power, Space technology (satellite surveillance), portable cameras and recording devices, and such. We are witnessing a new wave of tech and I think you really underestimate what people are capable of and how fast we are able to solve problems.
“As jobs will less force people to move, people will move areas less often, and the areas where people live will be less set by jobs.”
I only agree with 2/3 of this. Jobs will less force people to move, but that doesn’t mean they will move less. More the motivation for where and when people will move will change.
Before remote work, young people would often/easily move early in their careers to take the best job. As they age, it becomes harder to get them to move for a job as they weigh staying in the same location more and more. A job can be a “push” factor forcing people to move, but it can also be a “stick” factor in forcing people to stay.
I think the same thing will happen with remote work, but for different reasons. The younger population will continue to move frequently (for the reasons outlined in the article), and eventually will find a place to settle.
Whenever I see today's influencers gather followers on the new mediums, from Twitch to snapchat to TikTok, I wonder if this compound skill of acting, editing, and producing short viral video going to be a critical leadership skill in a remote workplace led by Gen Z managers.
Any good papers you'd suggest on the hard problems in neural prosthetics? I wish I could find the paper, but I recall reading that the brain can learn to activate a single neuron quite specifically (suppressing its neighbors). If there's that much control and plasticity, then even with just a couple thousand neurons that's quite a symphony.
"full immersion" on the other hand seems much further off. Still, there could be many early applications on the control side perhaps.
Fascinating stuff. I've long enjoyed your work. Have you ever written on how to resculpt government spending on medical research to achieve a result more Medician and less Soviet?
See medicine chapter of http://elephantinthebrain.com
Super cool modernista projecting, RH, and I agree with you that our medical progress is glacial (despite the cheerleading media). Love to see more of your insight as to why that is.
This tradeoff I see as producing less travel. Less local but more long distance travel, but a net of less travel.
Because of their stronger social solidarity, local areas dominated by family and informal social ties seem better suited to provide social insurance, such as medical, retirement, and unemployment benefits. But if so they should arrange for global reinsurance, to deal with risks that could hurt whole areas together. And firms might resist, having long offered social insurance to induce worker loyalties.
So I wonder will this for example allow the southern Europeans to catch up to the northern Europeans?Will it make societal trust less important?
Will more work be like piece work?
How do you think. this will impact the future of travel (as in air and ground travel)? I can imagine two opposing effects in business related travel.The obvious one is that, since many things can be done remotely, people travel less often for business. The second one is that, since a lot more people live far from work, many more people travel for work on a regular basis, to conduct business that is better done in person (for whatever reason).I can imagine, for example, people traveling every other week to a physical office, and working remotely otherwise.
Neuralink with enough well placed wires to allow full immersion in other worlds just won't happen in 30 years.
As I said, remote gives most of its boost to the middle of many distributions.