No offense but I sense status quo bias in this post.
If you replace “AI” with “industrial revolution” I don’t think the meaning of the text changes much and I expect most people would rather live today than in the Middle Ages.
One thing that might be concerning is that older generations (us in the future) might not have the ability to adapt to a drastically different world in the same way that some old people today struggle to use the internet.
I personally don’t expect to be overly nostalgic in the future because I’m not that impressed by the current state of the world: factory farming, the hedonic treadmill, physical and mental illness, wage slavery, aging, and ignorance are all problems that I hope are solved in the future.
With adapting, the important question is what happens if you don’t. If it only means you will miss out some fun, I don’t mind. Kids these days use Instagram and TikTok, I… don’t really understand the allure of that, so I stay away. I may change my mind in future, so it feels like I am choosing between two good things: the convenience of ignoring the new stuff, and the possible advantages of learning it.
It is different when the failure to adapt will make your life actively worse. Like people today who are old but not retired yet, who made the choice to ignore all that computer stuff, and now they can’t get a job. Or the peasants during the industrial revolution who made a bet that “people will always need some food, so my job is safe, regardless of all this new stuff”, and then someone powerful just took their fields and built a factory there, and let them starve to death (because they couldn’t get a job in that factory).
If the future will have all the problems solved, including the problem of “how can I get food and healthcare in a society where a robot can do literally anything much better and cheaper than me”, then… I will find a hobby; I never had a problem with that.
(I really hope the solution will not be “create stressful bullshit jobs”.)
A separate question is whether I can survive the point that is halfway between “here” and “there”.
I’m pretty worried about the future where we survive and build aligned AGI, but we don’t manage to fully solve all the coordination or societal problems. Humans as a species still have control overall, but individuals don’t really.
The world is crazy, and very good on most axes, but also disorienting and many people are somewhat unfulfilled.
It doesn’t seem crazy that people born before large societal changes (eg industrial revolution, development of computers, etc) do feel somewhat alienated from what society becomes. I could imagine some pre-industrial revolution farmer kind of missing the simplicity and control they had over their life (although this might be romanticizing the situation).
No offense but I sense status quo bias in this post.
If you replace “AI” with “industrial revolution” I don’t think the meaning of the text changes much and I expect most people would rather live today than in the Middle Ages.
One thing that might be concerning is that older generations (us in the future) might not have the ability to adapt to a drastically different world in the same way that some old people today struggle to use the internet.
I personally don’t expect to be overly nostalgic in the future because I’m not that impressed by the current state of the world: factory farming, the hedonic treadmill, physical and mental illness, wage slavery, aging, and ignorance are all problems that I hope are solved in the future.
With adapting, the important question is what happens if you don’t. If it only means you will miss out some fun, I don’t mind. Kids these days use Instagram and TikTok, I… don’t really understand the allure of that, so I stay away. I may change my mind in future, so it feels like I am choosing between two good things: the convenience of ignoring the new stuff, and the possible advantages of learning it.
It is different when the failure to adapt will make your life actively worse. Like people today who are old but not retired yet, who made the choice to ignore all that computer stuff, and now they can’t get a job. Or the peasants during the industrial revolution who made a bet that “people will always need some food, so my job is safe, regardless of all this new stuff”, and then someone powerful just took their fields and built a factory there, and let them starve to death (because they couldn’t get a job in that factory).
If the future will have all the problems solved, including the problem of “how can I get food and healthcare in a society where a robot can do literally anything much better and cheaper than me”, then… I will find a hobby; I never had a problem with that.
(I really hope the solution will not be “create stressful bullshit jobs”.)
A separate question is whether I can survive the point that is halfway between “here” and “there”.
I’m pretty worried about the future where we survive and build aligned AGI, but we don’t manage to fully solve all the coordination or societal problems. Humans as a species still have control overall, but individuals don’t really.
The world is crazy, and very good on most axes, but also disorienting and many people are somewhat unfulfilled.
It doesn’t seem crazy that people born before large societal changes (eg industrial revolution, development of computers, etc) do feel somewhat alienated from what society becomes. I could imagine some pre-industrial revolution farmer kind of missing the simplicity and control they had over their life (although this might be romanticizing the situation).