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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I don't think that AI is an existential risk. It is going to be more of a golden opportunity. For some not for all.

Given that most people oppose AI on various basis (religious, economic) chances are it will be implemented in a small group, and very few people will get to benefit from it. Wealthy people would probably be the first to use it.

This isn't a regular technology and it will not go first to the rich and then to everybody else, like it happened with the phones or computers in a couple of decades. This is where Kurzweil is wrong.

Can someone imagine the dynamics of a group that has access to AI for 20-30 years?

I doubt that after 20 or 30 years, heck even after 10 years, they would need any money so the assumption that it will be shared with the rest of the world for financial reasons doesn't seem founded.

So I am trying to save and figure what would be the cost of entry in this club.

Any thoughts on that?

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gwern's avatar

Joshua: you don't even need an intelligence explosion for AI to be cataclysmic. Just digital human-level intelligence is enough - no need to invoke either strong or weak superintelligence.

Imagine a human-level AI running on $100,000 a year of hardware, and imagine Moore's law has completely shutdown. You copy the premier patent law attorney, the premier oncologist, etc. Suddenly, those markets go from their current oligarchies to perfectly competitive winner-take-all markets reminiscent of FLOSS. (Why settle for an expensive inferior human, or Lawyer 1.2 when you can buy/rent Lawyer 2.0?)

And this can apply to most, if not all, of the white-collar professions. Even surgeons have been preparing their replacements with tele-surgery robots.

So, the blue-collar laborers get squeezed from below by machines, white-collar workers get squeezed from above by copies of the #1 in their profession, and that leaves not very much left. It may be a net win for humanity, but the 'crack of a future dawn' scenario will still be very painful for very many.

(As far as SA goes; I go with the dishonest-forecast and ignorance explanations. I'm not too sure what one could do in the crack scenario, though - buy equities? Try to change careers to something status-related that forbids copying?)

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