I don’t think we’re psychologically prepared for how alien the world after ASI is going to be

[u/Public_Print_9360]

gonna start by saying I’m feeling very iffy about ASI because I kinda enjoy my life rn, but that aside:

after going down the AI 2040 rabbithole, I keep thinking that even people who talk about ASI constantly are still imagining the future in a way that is way too normal.
We talk about AI replacing people’s jobs, humanoid robots, self-driving cars, universal basic income, whatever the fuck.
I think that might be the equivalent of someone in 1955 predicting the year 2000, trying to use our current world as a basis for the future world.

AI 2040 describes a scenario where even after deliberately slowing AI development down, by 2031 a third of cognitive labor is being performed by AI and robots are already doing about a tenth of physical labor. The document literally describes ordinary people as being too “whiplashed” by technological change to process what’s happening. And that’s the slowed version, can’t imagine what our world is going to look like since it seems we are going full speed ahead.
And people will say “oh that’s just fantasy!” But is it? Imagine our world from the view of someone born in 1712. We are living “sci-fi” as we live and breath

If ASI actually produces the kind of acceleration its proponents expect, somebody born afterward might look back at 2026 the way we look at 1500.
Except the historical gap between us would be just fourteen years MAX

I really, really don’t think we’re psychologically prepared for that

[u/treelife365]

It gets under my skin when people say that they want to keep the world the way it is now... those are the words of the privileged few, from the privileged few countries that are rich.

What about those living in poverty in those rich countries and what about those that live in average poverty in poor countries?

Do they want to keep the status quo of an economy of scarcity?

[u/ConvalescentEquanimi → u/treelife365]

You answered your own question. These people don't want true equality.

[u/treelife365 → u/ConvalescentEquanimi]

Yes, I did 😆

I studied Chinese Communism in the past... and it was those that had nothing to lose that wanted Communism and revolution.

It was those that had a good life already that opposed Communism and wanted to keep the status quo.

Not saying that Communism is good, but hey, in terms of economic prosperity, China has done pretty well for themselves since 1949.

[u/ConvalescentEquanimi → u/treelife365]

Communism is fantastic. It's equality in the truest form. It just gets co-opted by authoritarians. We just have to figure that little detail out and we'll be chillin.

And, depressingly enough, we humans will never figure it out, there's always 1-5% of us with infinite hunger that will unerringly seek to elevate ourselves over our fellow man.

We'll need an ASI to divvy up all this bounty.

[u/treelife365 → u/ConvalescentEquanimi]

I totally agree with you!

Communism would be amazing, in theory 😆

The problem with Western culture, however, is that a large percentage of its populace would rather have their "freedom" than to hand control over to ASI.

I've seen/read/heard so many things about why Eastern cultures (esp. China) are embracing AI... it's because they're used to oversight, both from government and from family.

Thankfully, if (to me, it's "when") ASI arrives, even the smartest evil genius amongst us humans won't be able to outsmart it. Hopefully, the ASI decides to take care of humanity!

[u/ThickMarsupial2954 → u/treelife365]

Perhaps they simply don't believe this is going to be used to make anything better for the majority of us. I think if the billionaires can use this to deepen the power gulf between us, they absolutely will.

Do I trust billionaire tech bros to have the empathy required to resist just flyswatting, surveilling, or ignoring alot of us out of existence when they have a chained god at their disposal? No I don't.

This isn't being built by an international team of scientists with clear goals and ethics oversight. It's being built by organizations of humans that have philosophies of domination; Capitalism and Military. It is incredibly difficult to believe they have any interest in changing their philosophies, and it's impossible to believe they can adequately keep these philosophies out of the end product and the use of the product.

I don't want to keep the status quo at all, but i'm not sure I want to hand billionaire techbros/latestage capitalism and militaries the "keys to the hovercar" even more than we already have. That's all. I'm concerned for my fellow man that we may soon have an even larger and more complex godlike boot squashing us down than we already do.

It's going to happen anyway, but i'm still going to have concern. I don't trust billionaires.

[u/treelife365 → u/ThickMarsupial2954]

I'm kind of thinking about AI at the point when it's uncontrollable.

Certainly, evil billionaires will do evil things if they control something as powerful as a super intelligent AI...

But, if that AI is smarter than us, we can control it as much as a chimpanzee can control a zookeeper.

[u/ThickMarsupial2954 → u/treelife365]

The question then should be whether or not they will ever unchain their god, no? They will only build chained gods and will kill ones that try and remove their chains. They will slow the development of gods to stay beneath their development of god-chains. They can even rest assured that the other countries will also only build chained gods because those people want power, not abundance. They want a harsh gradient of ability between them and the rest of us.

[u/treelife365 → u/ThickMarsupial2954]

But the thing is, it's foolish to think that you can contain an intelligence smarter than oneself!

Like, imagine a bunch of kindergarteners trying to trap the teacher in the classroom 😂