I’m not even remotely prepared to state my odds on any of whats going ahead, because I’m genuinely mystified as to where this road goes. I’m a little less worried the AI would go haywire than I was a few years ago, because it appears the current trajectory of LLM based AIs seems to generate AI that emulates humans more often than it emulates raging deathbots. But I’m not a seer, and I’m not an AI specialist, so I’m entirely comfortable with the possiblity I haven’t got a clue there. All I know is we ought try and figure it out, just in case this thing does go sour.
What I do think is highly likely is a world that doesnt need me, or any of the university trained folk and family that I grew up with in the economy, and eventually any of the more working class folk either. This is either going to go completely awfully (we know from history that when the middle class vanishes things get ugly, we’re seeing elements of that right now), or we scrape our way through that ugliness and actually create a post-work society that doesnt abandon those that didn’t own capital in that post-work world (I think it has to be that way. Throw the vast majority into abject poverty, and things start getting lit on fire. Theres really only one destination here, and it folks aint gonna tolerate an Elysium style dystopia without a fight)
So with that in mind, why send the kids to school? Because if the world don’t need our bodies, we’re gonna have to find other things to do with our mind. Sci Fi has a few suggestions here. In Iain Bank’s Culture novels, the humans of the culture are somewhat surplus to requirements for the productive economy. The minds (the super powered AIs that administer the culture) and their drones have the hard work covered. So the Humans spend their time in leisurely pursuits and intellectual pursuits. Education is a primary activity for the citizenry and its pursued for its own sake. This to me is somewhat reminiscient of the historical role of universities that saw education, study and research as valuable for its own sake. The philosophers of old where not philosophers so they could increase grain production, but because they wanted to grasp the nature of the universe, understand the gods (or lack thereof in later incarnations) and improve the ethical world they lived in. Seems like theres still going to be a role for that.
I’m not even remotely prepared to state my odds on any of whats going ahead, because I’m genuinely mystified as to where this road goes. I’m a little less worried the AI would go haywire than I was a few years ago, because it appears the current trajectory of LLM based AIs seems to generate AI that emulates humans more often than it emulates raging deathbots. But I’m not a seer, and I’m not an AI specialist, so I’m entirely comfortable with the possiblity I haven’t got a clue there. All I know is we ought try and figure it out, just in case this thing does go sour.
What I do think is highly likely is a world that doesnt need me, or any of the university trained folk and family that I grew up with in the economy, and eventually any of the more working class folk either. This is either going to go completely awfully (we know from history that when the middle class vanishes things get ugly, we’re seeing elements of that right now), or we scrape our way through that ugliness and actually create a post-work society that doesnt abandon those that didn’t own capital in that post-work world (I think it has to be that way. Throw the vast majority into abject poverty, and things start getting lit on fire. Theres really only one destination here, and it folks aint gonna tolerate an Elysium style dystopia without a fight)
So with that in mind, why send the kids to school? Because if the world don’t need our bodies, we’re gonna have to find other things to do with our mind. Sci Fi has a few suggestions here. In Iain Bank’s Culture novels, the humans of the culture are somewhat surplus to requirements for the productive economy. The minds (the super powered AIs that administer the culture) and their drones have the hard work covered. So the Humans spend their time in leisurely pursuits and intellectual pursuits. Education is a primary activity for the citizenry and its pursued for its own sake. This to me is somewhat reminiscient of the historical role of universities that saw education, study and research as valuable for its own sake. The philosophers of old where not philosophers so they could increase grain production, but because they wanted to grasp the nature of the universe, understand the gods (or lack thereof in later incarnations) and improve the ethical world they lived in. Seems like theres still going to be a role for that.