Listen to new types of music, perfectly designed to sound good to you.
Design the biggest roller coaster ever and have AI build it.
Visit ancient Greece or view all the most important events of history based on superhuman AI archeology and historical reconstruction.
Bring back Dinosaurs and create new creatures.
Genetically modify cats to play catch.
Design buildings in new architectural styles and have AI build them.
Use brain computer interfaces to play videogames / simulations that feel 100% real to all senses, but which are not constrained by physics.
Go to Hogwarts (in a 100% realistic simulation) and learn magic and make real (AI) friends with Ron and Hermione.
These examples all seem to be about entertainment or aesthetics. Entertainment and aesthetics things are important to get right and interesting. I wouldn’t be moved by any description of a future that centred around entertainment though, and if the world is otherwise fine, I’m fairly sure there will be good entertainment.
To me, the one with the most important-seeming implications is the last one, because that might have implications for what social relationships exist and whether they are mostly human-human or AI-human or AI-AI. We discuss why changes there are maybe risky in this section.
Use AI as the best teacher ever to learn maths, physics and every subject and language and musical instruments to super-expert level.
Take medication that makes you always feel wide awake, focused etc. with no side effects.
Engineer your body / use cybernetics to make yourself never have to eat, sleep, wash, etc. and be able to jump very high, run very fast, climb up walls, etc.
Modify your brain to have better short term memory, eidetic memory, be able to calculate any arithmetic super fast, be super charismatic.
I think these are interesting and important! I think there isn’t yet a concrete story for why AI in particular enables these, apart from the general principle that sufficiently good AI will accelerate all technology. I think there’s unfortunately a chance that direct benefits to human biology lag other AI effects by a lot, because they might face big hurdles due to regulation and/or getting the real-world data the AI needs. (Though also, humans are willing to pay a lot for health, and rationally should pay a lot for cognitive benefits, so high demand might make up for this).
Re your specific list items:
These examples all seem to be about entertainment or aesthetics. Entertainment and aesthetics things are important to get right and interesting. I wouldn’t be moved by any description of a future that centred around entertainment though, and if the world is otherwise fine, I’m fairly sure there will be good entertainment.
To me, the one with the most important-seeming implications is the last one, because that might have implications for what social relationships exist and whether they are mostly human-human or AI-human or AI-AI. We discuss why changes there are maybe risky in this section.
We discuss this, though very briefly, in this section.
I think these are interesting and important! I think there isn’t yet a concrete story for why AI in particular enables these, apart from the general principle that sufficiently good AI will accelerate all technology. I think there’s unfortunately a chance that direct benefits to human biology lag other AI effects by a lot, because they might face big hurdles due to regulation and/or getting the real-world data the AI needs. (Though also, humans are willing to pay a lot for health, and rationally should pay a lot for cognitive benefits, so high demand might make up for this).
I think the general theme of having the AIs help us make more use of AIs is important! We talk about it in general terms in the “AI is the ultimate meta-technology” section.