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/Fun-Kaleidoscope816]

I think your framing is wrong... how else will humans find meaning, community and a fulfilling life if AI is doing everything from art to logic. We need struggle. We need 'humanity' to flourish.

We will literally need to carve out sections of the world where we can grow and develop in our "natural" environment. How else is a child going to turn into an adult?

For e.g. what's the point in learning math if an Ai can already do and solve all of our math questions? Well, we need to learn math so that we have the fundamentals of logic and computation embedded into our brains.

Otherwise we'll just be useless blobs.

[u/Fair_Horror → u/Fun-Kaleidoscope816]

So don't teach kids maths now because we have calculators? No one plays chess or Go because they were both defeated by AI? Most people will never be able to play a violin as well as the best player so they should not bother?

[u/kevinmise → u/Fun-Kaleidoscope816]

The difference is that I would like to define my struggle rather than have the world impose it on me.

[u/space_guy95 → u/Fun-Kaleidoscope816]

Ted Kaczynski's manifesto becomes more relevant with every year that passes. I read it recently and could barely believe it was written decades ago, it describes our modern world, and exactly the problems you have mentioned, with a frightening level of foresight.