I've never work towards anything in my life and yet still have perverse fantasies of becoming an Autuer that causes me a great deal of discontent in my self image. So I lash out at people more talented than I, and lie in wait in hopes someone will hand me the opportunity to live out my fantasies without any effort on my part!

​

And Robin Hanson's gonna get me a free girlfriend anyways.

Depends on how you define soon. Median answer in this survey of AI experts is 2061 for AGI https://ourworldindata.org/ai-timelines

A great many "experts" went on the record back in the 90s saying AGI would never happen or if it did it wouldn't happen for a 100 years. In a recent conference of "experts" most are now saying it will happen by 2030. While no one knows the future (as in we could have a nuclear war, etc.) the trend lines are largely moving us toward a technological singularly. You can see numerous graphs in Ray Kurzweils, "The Singularity Is Near" demonstrating the exponential growth of technology. His new book will also include this data as well (see the Lex Fridman podcast below.) Could something happen to push the date off, sure it could. But, thus far, war, a worldwide depression and a pandemic hasn't done it. Also, I'm not sure why people shouldn't look forward to a world without poverty and a betterment of the human condition. Life is getting better thanks to technology and, I for one, would like to see that continue not just for my own serious ends (kidding) but for the rest of humanity. Nothing wrong with that as far as I can see. Happiness is something to aim for. We don't always get it in this life but no reason not to keep reaching for it. Technology can make a lot of people more happy, more healthy, more fulfilled. I say, "Let's do this thing." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykY69lSpDdo&list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4&index=37

This is a reasonable response and the downvoting is cultish.

Things need to be thought through to logical ends. If say 20% of the labor force was knocked out of employment due to AI over a 2-3 year period, the loss in income tax and the spike in foreclosures would critically injure our economy. Nobody would buy things, so companies couldn't afford to hire for even menial roles.

Technological advances have only augmented and opened labor markets. Sure, the automobile industry killed the horse carriage industry, but did the ramifications of that show any threat to society in hindsight? Why is AI the magic pill that suddenly destroys this pattern?

Eh whatever.

Carmack who?

You’re right in that information/communications technologies as a whole have developed rapidly over the last century. This is part of Robert Gordon’s idea of an overall innovation slowdown (lots of progress in bits, very linear progress almost everywhere else).

I don’t buy his whole argument or his outlook for the future, I just wanted to dispute the idea that exponentials are a guaranteed and perpetually ongoing trend.

It doesn't matter what congress gives or doesn't, what matters is the amount of goods and services. More currency and the same supply = higher prices. No one is better, really, a once people with savings get the idea money flees, the currency goes into a doom loop of purchasing power loss.

It can't, not unless real AI goes for energy and food production, increasing it by a very significant degree.

That is the foundation of any economy, and it looks like it's nowhere close to that.

>fallacy fallacy

Fallacy fallacy fallacy

>Moore's Law is actually very unusual in that almost no other technologies follow an exponential trend like that, especially not for as long as Moore's Law has held.

Not special to transistors, mechanical computers, relays and vacuum tubes exhibited these trends as well, all slightly accelerating from previous one.

To call the ability to process information a technology is I think slightly disrespectful as it underlays all applications of technology, it's the primus motor of everything.

I'm curious about the demographics of this sub. Based on the subject, the tone, and the fact that it's Reddit, it's probably mostly young men in the U.S. Occupationally, probably a mix of tech sector and students. As far as I can tell, there are not a lot of people with a strong grasp of history, economics or politics (most obvious from the highly contestable assumption that UBI is somehow inevitable).

Not trying to slag anyone. I just agree with OP's general point that social, economic, and political factors play just as big a role as the underlying technology in determining real-world impacts.

Despite not believing the singularity is guaranteed to happen in our lifetime, I enjoy this sub more than other subs with a similar focus (Futurology, Technology, etc...)

The optimism here can sometimes be a bit much but overall it’s refreshing to see people hopeful for a better future. Reading through the other subs (especially technology) you come by 95% pessimistic outlooks (the future will be bad, AI replacing workers, everyone will be unemployed because of AI, corporations will just use AI for themselves, etc...). It even gets to the point where everyone in those technology and futurology subs seems to be against any sort of advance in technology or progressing into the future. They offer no solutions other than to completely stop all technological progress because future bad. They really don’t seem to understand that the future can actually be good, it can vastly improve their lives just like lives have vastly improved today compared to 100 years ago because of technology.

At least people here have some sort of goal for the future rather than all the pessimists that want everything to stay exactly as it is. This sub even offers solutions to the problems the pessimists bring up like UBI for those that lose their jobs due to AI. Hanging onto the modern status quo just because is just dumb to me, thing will change, jobs will be lost but ultimately it could and would be for the better.

Could we get some actual discussion in here it's getting boring.

Agree on principles and current hyper growth companies time horizon from the 99 peak hype bubble to the incredible life changing tech we have today. Netflix took 25 years to become an under appreciated behemoth of content creation and the established cable industry + Hollywood scoffed at its mailback DVD business back then.. they are now investing a billion in creating a Hollywood of the east in NJ… but it still took them 25 years.

My guess is this is actually a good timeline to go by for true change as the established players die / retire out of the position of power they hold today.

Always remember that just because money means so much to everyone that doesn’t have “enough” it starts to become more and more meaningless the less of it you need. Power and control over shaping things to your vision of how they “should be” means way more to the decision makers signing the POs. They are more interested in keeping things the way it suits their lifestyle than disrupting their lives.

Something that may change your mind:

No matter what political ideology you subscribe to, there's one major issue with them all - someone has to clean the toilets. No matter how "fool proof" your utopia blueprints are, most people are going to be stuck with awful unfulfilling roles, and hate their lives.

That is, until we have cheap general-purpose robots. Adaptable AI powered bots will do every last one of those soul crushing tasks that make people want to shoot themselves. That's why I think technology will save us all

A lot to copious on both sides for sure but what I don’t understand is that say the Singularity does occur in a pessimistic timeframe (eg 50 years). That’ll still be in most people’s lifetimes and the changes that would occur would completely change the human race. We are living in one of the most critical points in time where the world could either get exponentially better or worse in most people’s lifetimes. You are definitely right about the copium on this sub but I think even the more pessimistic predictions about AI have insane ramifications that need to be talked about more.

>I'm just saying that maybe the "luddites" are coping

I get called luddite constantly on this sub for pointing out more realistic outcomes for this technology, especially when it comes to media. People act as if I am against it, but I am not; it just seems like people only have vapid motivations for using a technology that would otherwise be a powerful tool in the hands of an already skilled person.

I have heard every argument from transparent "disruption" jargon, to petulant and childish desires relishing the power to change the finale of a show the poster didn't like. Its disgustingly solipsistic and degenerate.

As a society, through this tech we will find out what happens when you give stolen talent to a philistine.

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>ad hominem

fallacy fallacy

Begun, the AI wars have. (I’m so sorry)

"most AI experts don't think we'll have a singularity-like event for at least a few decades, if not longer" ok well, partly that's because singularity isn't very well defined, and partly that's because many AI-experts have their head stuck in the sand trying to figure out extremely specific things and not noticing the massive forest for the tree, so to speak... That being said, any expert that thinks 'AGI' is a 2050+ thing or 'impossible' is either joking or not as smart as you think they are.

If you want to know what 'copium' looks like, then look no further than the endless moving goalpost of what counts as AI. This has been going on for like 60 years. Every time AI can do new things, people come out to nitpick and say "well it can't do XYZ and never will because reasons" and then the AI does that too and they come back "well it's not AI because it didn't do it perfectly" and then it does it perfectly and they come back and say "well it isn't really AI because XYZ doesn't prove anything, a real AI could do ABC" and on and on it goes until it subjugates you in every possible way.

(I'm one of the people who believes the singularity is coming within my lifetime, before 2060 as a majority of experts believe, and that it will have a large positive impact)

That said, the post doesn't feel directed against me as a person, just directed against my position.

> ad ho·mi·nem

> (of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.

Isn't there value in thinking about why we maintain our positive outlooks on AI development? (My reasoning, to be fair, stems largely from being abnormally healthy enough to estimate that I could easily live to see 2060, even without modifications).

I agree with your general sentiment about AI being the crucial technology here, but I think you're simplifying it a lot.

> Arguments become weaker the more conservative they are because of exponential growth.

Technology doesn't always advance exponentially. Most of the time it's actually pretty linear. It's the adoption rates that tend to be exponential. Look at cars. The step up from horse and buggy to an automobile was a MASSIVE singular jump in tech, and it was rapidly adopted by the majority of the world. But since then, cars have gotten better, faster, more fuel efficient, etc, but all that progress over the last hundred years has been slow and linear.

Moore's Law is actually very unusual in that almost no other technologies follow an exponential trend like that, especially not for as long as Moore's Law has held.

AI has been exponential over the last decade or so, mostly owing to scaling up parameters and data, but we've already hit realistic parameter limits and we're rapidly closing in on the limits of how much data exists for training. I have no doubt that these issues will be circumvented at some point, but there's no guarantee the exponential will continue to hold indefinitely.

If we vote for someone legendary like a Bernie we could prob get it before the water wars

What’s wrong with being passionate and excited about the future. Even if your wrong, what people believe or don’t believe on this forum has zero impact on the real world. For me it’s like buying a lottery ticket. It’s highly unlikely I’ll win, but I am paying for the time I get to spend imagining what it would be like if I did win.