On the one hand, I understand your point that preparing for breakdown of the economy may be more important if the likelihood of disasters in general increases; even though the most catastrophic AI scenarios would not leave a space to flee to, maybe the likelihood of more mundane disasters also increases? However, it is also possible that the marginal expected value of investing time in such skills goes down. After all, in a more technological society, learning technology skills may be more important than before, so the opportunity cost goes up.
I’m not actually talking about a complete breakdown of economy or society, just significant shocks to retail, IT, and supply chains and longer term economic shifts.
If I may draw a historical parallel: we shut down our entire airline transportation industry for weeks after 9/11, reducing annual GDP about 0.5%. Not to trivialize the ~3000 deaths and related suffering that occurred but, IMO, AI-facilitated deliberate attacks by malicious actors or nation states could easily be orders of magnitude worse. I honestly don’t know exactly how capable and prepared the US government is of ‘shutting down’ the internet completely. This would be a huge decision but I would be very surprised if they don’t already have a protocol in place for major catastrophic cyber scenarios that effectively does exactly this.
I suspect it might only take one order of magnitude (i.e., 30,000 deaths) perhaps two, before the Federal Agencies that be, pull the plug at every ISP and every telecom data provider for months. 3 OOM, it could be years. Yes, the consequences would be economically catastrophic.… and yes, there would probably be some hacky half-effective work-arounds via, decentralized networks, RF, satellite etc. but yes it could absolutely happened.
Information and computing Technologies would still have limited function in society but it wouldn’t be long before we saw some massive shifts in how digital tech-centric our economic future remained.
You think that with a relevant probability, major catastrophic events will happen that lead to situations in which traditional non-digital “prepper” skills are relevant,
and therefore, parents or families should invest a larger share of their own and their children’s time and resources into learning such skills,
compared to a world that was not “on the eve of AI”.
I’m not clear on what you mean by ‘relevant probability’, however, yes, I do think that we will see AGI within two decades, and with respect to AI,
P(massive job displacement) is high, perhaps 30-50%, P(millions die / acute catastrophe) is perhaps 3-6% and P(billions die / doom) is perhaps 0.2-0.5%
So, I’d say P(catastrophe) is not negligible and will likely slowly rise over time (so long as Information technology generally improves). If it does happened, I would not be surprised if governments take drastic action including potential broad blanket internet blackouts which would increase the value of certain non-IT skills.
I do worry about economic stability during any AI takeoff because the lack thereof could severely inhibit our ability to respond.
I think the term ‘prepper’ skills is a tad derogatory and perhaps simplistic, but I do believe that we are slowly loosing many of those skill sets that contribute to self-sufficiency and I do believe some skills associated with ‘prepping’ are valuable (i.e., basic first aid, CPR, orienteering, navigation, engineering, construction, carpentry, mechanical repair, basic agriculture, PPE, maintaining some food/water supply, etc.). Obviously, I am not talking about the more extreme fringes of prepping which becomes a different conversation.
I did not intend the word ‘prepper’ to be detogatory, but to be a word for ‘classical’ preparedness skills.
While I understand your risk assessment and it may be true that increasing societal risk makes such prepper skills more valuable, I think it neglects the problem that ‘digital’ skills, both for job qualifications and for disaster situations, may also become more valuable than before. As time is still only 24 hours a day, it is not clear how the ‘life preparedness curriculum’ composition should be different compared to, for example, growing up 20 years ago.
On the one hand, I understand your point that preparing for breakdown of the economy may be more important if the likelihood of disasters in general increases; even though the most catastrophic AI scenarios would not leave a space to flee to, maybe the likelihood of more mundane disasters also increases? However, it is also possible that the marginal expected value of investing time in such skills goes down. After all, in a more technological society, learning technology skills may be more important than before, so the opportunity cost goes up.
I’m not actually talking about a complete breakdown of economy or society, just significant shocks to retail, IT, and supply chains and longer term economic shifts.
If I may draw a historical parallel: we shut down our entire airline transportation industry for weeks after 9/11, reducing annual GDP about 0.5%. Not to trivialize the ~3000 deaths and related suffering that occurred but, IMO, AI-facilitated deliberate attacks by malicious actors or nation states could easily be orders of magnitude worse. I honestly don’t know exactly how capable and prepared the US government is of ‘shutting down’ the internet completely. This would be a huge decision but I would be very surprised if they don’t already have a protocol in place for major catastrophic cyber scenarios that effectively does exactly this.
I suspect it might only take one order of magnitude (i.e., 30,000 deaths) perhaps two, before the Federal Agencies that be, pull the plug at every ISP and every telecom data provider for months. 3 OOM, it could be years. Yes, the consequences would be economically catastrophic.… and yes, there would probably be some hacky half-effective work-arounds via, decentralized networks, RF, satellite etc. but yes it could absolutely happened.
Information and computing Technologies would still have limited function in society but it wouldn’t be long before we saw some massive shifts in how digital tech-centric our economic future remained.
I try to summarize your position:
You think that with a relevant probability, major catastrophic events will happen that lead to situations in which traditional non-digital “prepper” skills are relevant,
and therefore, parents or families should invest a larger share of their own and their children’s time and resources into learning such skills,
compared to a world that was not “on the eve of AI”.
Right?
I’m not clear on what you mean by ‘relevant probability’, however, yes, I do think that we will see AGI within two decades, and with respect to AI,
P(massive job displacement) is high, perhaps 30-50%,
P(millions die / acute catastrophe) is perhaps 3-6% and
P(billions die / doom) is perhaps 0.2-0.5%
So, I’d say P(catastrophe) is not negligible and will likely slowly rise over time (so long as Information technology generally improves). If it does happened, I would not be surprised if governments take drastic action including potential broad blanket internet blackouts which would increase the value of certain non-IT skills.
I do worry about economic stability during any AI takeoff because the lack thereof could severely inhibit our ability to respond.
I think the term ‘prepper’ skills is a tad derogatory and perhaps simplistic, but I do believe that we are slowly loosing many of those skill sets that contribute to self-sufficiency and I do believe some skills associated with ‘prepping’ are valuable (i.e., basic first aid, CPR, orienteering, navigation, engineering, construction, carpentry, mechanical repair, basic agriculture, PPE, maintaining some food/water supply, etc.). Obviously, I am not talking about the more extreme fringes of prepping which becomes a different conversation.
I did not intend the word ‘prepper’ to be detogatory, but to be a word for ‘classical’ preparedness skills.
While I understand your risk assessment and it may be true that increasing societal risk makes such prepper skills more valuable, I think it neglects the problem that ‘digital’ skills, both for job qualifications and for disaster situations, may also become more valuable than before. As time is still only 24 hours a day, it is not clear how the ‘life preparedness curriculum’ composition should be different compared to, for example, growing up 20 years ago.