What will I do when I grow up, if AI can do everything?
One interesting this about this question is that it comes from an implicit frame in which humans must do something to support their survival.
This is deeply ingrained in our biology and culture. As animals, we carry in us the well-worn drives to survive and reproduce, for which if we did not possess we not not exist because our ancestors would never have created the unbroken chain of billions of years that led to us. And with those drives comes the need to do something useful to those ends.
As humans, we are enmeshed in a culture that exists at the frontier of a long process of becoming ever better at working together to get better at surviving, because those cultures that did it better outcompeted those that were worse at it. And so we approach our entire lives with this question in our minds: what actions will I take that contribute to my survival and the survival of my society?
Transformative AI stands to break the survival frame, where the problem of our survival is put into the hands of beings more powerful than ourselves. And so then the question becomes, what do we do if we don’t have to do anything to survive?
I imagine quite a lot of things! Consider what it is like to be a pet kept by humans. They have all their survival needs met for them. Some of them are so inexperienced at surviving that they’d probably die if their human caretakers disappeared, and others would make it but without the experience of years of caring for their own survival to make them experts at it. What do they do given they don’t have to fight to survive? They live in luxury and happiness, if their caretakers love them and are skillful, or suffering and sorrow, if their caretakers don’t or aren’t.
So perhaps like a dog who lives to chase a ball or a cat who lives for napping in the sun, we will one day live to tell stories, to play games, or to simply enjoy the pleasures of being alive. Let us hope that’s the world we manage to create!
Well that is (commendably) the most positive interpretation of the pet hypothesis I’ve heard. When we think about it, we’re really half way there already. By many measures, many of us are living in what anyone in the past would call Utopia, and are very much cared for by many over-arching systems, the market, the government, the internet. I’ve also never been one to complain “Oh, but what will I do with all my spare time if I don’t have to work?”
Perhaps my daughter will have time to reach goals she actually wants to achieve rather than those of necessity. I appreciate your thoughts.
One interesting this about this question is that it comes from an implicit frame in which humans must do something to support their survival.
This is deeply ingrained in our biology and culture. As animals, we carry in us the well-worn drives to survive and reproduce, for which if we did not possess we not not exist because our ancestors would never have created the unbroken chain of billions of years that led to us. And with those drives comes the need to do something useful to those ends.
As humans, we are enmeshed in a culture that exists at the frontier of a long process of becoming ever better at working together to get better at surviving, because those cultures that did it better outcompeted those that were worse at it. And so we approach our entire lives with this question in our minds: what actions will I take that contribute to my survival and the survival of my society?
Transformative AI stands to break the survival frame, where the problem of our survival is put into the hands of beings more powerful than ourselves. And so then the question becomes, what do we do if we don’t have to do anything to survive?
I imagine quite a lot of things! Consider what it is like to be a pet kept by humans. They have all their survival needs met for them. Some of them are so inexperienced at surviving that they’d probably die if their human caretakers disappeared, and others would make it but without the experience of years of caring for their own survival to make them experts at it. What do they do given they don’t have to fight to survive? They live in luxury and happiness, if their caretakers love them and are skillful, or suffering and sorrow, if their caretakers don’t or aren’t.
So perhaps like a dog who lives to chase a ball or a cat who lives for napping in the sun, we will one day live to tell stories, to play games, or to simply enjoy the pleasures of being alive. Let us hope that’s the world we manage to create!
Well that is (commendably) the most positive interpretation of the pet hypothesis I’ve heard. When we think about it, we’re really half way there already. By many measures, many of us are living in what anyone in the past would call Utopia, and are very much cared for by many over-arching systems, the market, the government, the internet. I’ve also never been one to complain “Oh, but what will I do with all my spare time if I don’t have to work?”
Perhaps my daughter will have time to reach goals she actually wants to achieve rather than those of necessity. I appreciate your thoughts.