The tech bros are preparing for the singularity - a point when AI surpasses human intelligence and technological progress accelerates beyond human imagination and control. Investors pour billions into the development of advanced AI (called AGI). They claim that we will reach the singularity in a few years - or that it has even already begun.
I do share this prediction. But my view does not matter for the purpose of this post. I also don’t want to discuss the (important!) question whether it is a wise idea to develop AI which is a thousand times smarter than us. This second question is not only unimportant for the following discussion, it is maybe even irrelevant because we - normal people - will most likely not be given the chance to decide anyway.
Therefore, most tech bros believe that the singularity will become reality soon. But what technological wonders can we expect from such highly advanced artificial intelligence?
My old self as a physicist assumes that there are hardly any limits of what could be done. Reversing climate damage, solving the energy problem, ending world hunger and even terraforming our planet back into a green paradise will most probably only be early apprentice pieces for such a technology. ASI (which will follow very shortly after AGI) in action will look much more like „Harry Potter“ than a conventional SciFi movie.
In short: the possibilities must be simply mind boggling and far beyond what humans can even imagine.
Again, the question whether it is a good idea to try our luck is not what I wan’t to write about today.
Let’s just assume in the following that….
- The tech bros believe that the singularity will happen
- The tech bros believe that ASI will give us (or rather: them) magic like superpowers
But, even if we can’t imagine all the possibilities offered by AGI we should maybe still develop a - necessarily rather crude - vision for the future of humankind (or at least for ourselves!).
So what do we get from the tech bros regarding this matter?
Actually not much. Currently they are building luxury bunkers in New Zealand and Argentina because they seemingly expect their own total failure. They promise us a universal basic income (UBI) while they are still selling their surveillance systems, weapons of social society destruction, overpriced poor software, rigged search engines or access to hallucinating AI bots with criminal tendencies.
Come on guys! Who needs money in paradise? What a joke! And why are you preparing for a future which is so horribly catastrophic that no sane human would like to remain alive in case it becomes reality? Yes, I understand, I’m - a bit - scared too. But a cyanide capsule for a dollar will be totally sufficient and all you will really want in this scenario (a rusty knife will do fine too in case you don’t have a dollar anymore in five years [1]).
Why don't you guys even try to imagine something really cool for yourself and your kids?
Let me help you a bit: something like „a world where we all have not much else to do than to figure out creative ways to make each other happy beyond imagination“ would be a good start.
Why don't you come up with stuff like this? Tell me, I’d really love to know!
I know, you won’t talk to me. So let me at least think a bit about all this.
Definition: Ambition is the ratio of what you are trying to achieve in your life to what is actually possible to achieve for you.
Note that „working hard“ is not part of the definition: no one would call someone ambitious just because he carries stones around in his garden for 14 hours every day. Intelligence does not count either: If Einstein's only ambition had been to earn himself a cheeseburger every day, we would have no accurate theory of gravitation today.
Therefore, if we apply this - slightly generalized but still totally sensible - definition to our tech bros we can only state that they have a level of ambition corresponding to total bums.
I’m really sorry to tell, but that’s just what follows from the math [2].
And yes, this might become a problem for all of us.
[1] Maybe because you have lost all of them to another tech bro?
[2] I have computed all this on your cloud infrastructure
Image: Pixabay / Jonas Fehre (Ireland). Thank you!