Are any of the socio-economic-political-demographic problems of the world actually fixable or improvable in the time before the imminent singularity renders them all moot anyway? It all feels like bread-and-circuses to me.
The pressing political issues of today are unlikely to even be in the top-10 in a decade.
Yes, lots of socioeconomic problems have been solved on a 5 to 10 year timescale.
I also disagree that problems will become moot after the singularity unless it kills everyone—the US has a good chance of continuing to exist, and improving democracy will probably make AI go slightly better.
As far as I know, the latest representative expert survey on the topic is “Thousands of AI Authors on the Future of AI”, in which the median time for a 50% chance of AGI was either in 23 or 92 years, depending on how the question was phrased:
If science continues undisrupted, the chance of unaided machines outperforming humans in every possible task was estimated at 10% by 2027, and 50% by 2047. [...] However, the chance of all human occupations becoming fully automatable was forecast to reach 10% by 2037, and 50% as late as 2116 (compared to 2164 in the 2022 survey).
Not that these numbers would mean much because AI experts aren’t experts on forecasting, but it still suggests a substantial possibility for AGI to take quite a while yet.
Are any of the socio-economic-political-demographic problems of the world actually fixable or improvable in the time before the imminent singularity renders them all moot anyway? It all feels like bread-and-circuses to me.
The pressing political issues of today are unlikely to even be in the top-10 in a decade.
Yes, lots of socioeconomic problems have been solved on a 5 to 10 year timescale.
I also disagree that problems will become moot after the singularity unless it kills everyone—the US has a good chance of continuing to exist, and improving democracy will probably make AI go slightly better.
As far as I know, the latest representative expert survey on the topic is “Thousands of AI Authors on the Future of AI”, in which the median time for a 50% chance of AGI was either in 23 or 92 years, depending on how the question was phrased:
Not that these numbers would mean much because AI experts aren’t experts on forecasting, but it still suggests a substantial possibility for AGI to take quite a while yet.