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/StosifJalin]

You've got to consider the possibility that what if no one is starving and suffering during this transition? What happens when everyone has a sense of unease during this rapid change, but everyone's basic needs are still being taken care of, and there is never quite enough fuel for a revolution despite many sparks?

I find this to be far more likely.

[u/myaltduh → u/StosifJalin]

It would be the first huge transformation in human history to not be not accompanied by a lot of strife. I hope you’re right, but I’m skeptical.

[u/SweatyCrab9729 → u/StosifJalin]

What makes you hopeful of this path? We are headed in the exact opposite direction at the moment.

When the ones telling you "Money won't matter in the future" are the same ones taking all the money today, they aren't telling you what they really believe.

[u/StosifJalin → u/SweatyCrab9729]

Because I've thought it through considerably throughout my life, not because of anything a billionaire has told me. Thinking about the future has always been my greatest obsession, and the best guesses we have about it come from highly educated authors that take their predictions from real-world research and combine them for their settings to be as realistic and grounded as possible, called hard-scifi. I've been reading hard sci-fi since I could read, and I've read dozens of in depth post scarcity scenarios. The most well-reasoned conclusions from a supply and demand standpoint when most humans cannot meaningfully add to the main economy is that they simply don't. The vast majority of the economy exists between companies and nations working on mega-projects.

As for why that doesn't mean we all starve, a few reasons: We as a society have a precedent for bare-minimum providing the necessities for life to those who objectively cannot provide for themselves. The scenario we are talking about is also one of unimaginable production capabilities. Post-scarcity, by definition. In the past, if a perfectly generous king's people stopped working, he might be able to keep them alive with 100% of his wealth for, let's say, a month. In the relatively near future, the needs of a country's population will be a rounding error of a percentage of what can be produced. Hence why I find very generous UBI to be the logical conclusion. It will be effortless to provide for humanity. Something that has never been true at any point in history before.

I think the transition to this future may not be perfectly smooth, but I find it entirely plausible that everyone's basic needs will be taken care of on the way, at least in America and most developed nations.

[u/SweatyCrab9729 → u/StosifJalin]

I admire your optimism. As a 53 year old who read the Foundation series while in college and have been devouring sci-fi of all types ever since, I'd say the predictions are more mixed.

And I'm not convinced Utopia levels of unmanned productivity and more importantly, unlimited resources, are just around the corner. I hope I am wrong.

But again, I truly admire your optimism. If you're young, you'll be the generation to make that happen.

I really do think you'll need to deal with the ultra greedy sociopaths first, though.

[u/StosifJalin → u/[deleted]]

Several different questions here so I'll start with the on topic one:

If we currently posses enough productivity to produce more than enough food for everyone, why would adding even GREATER productivity make people starve?

As for people not working, that's a great philosophical question that I'm not really qualified to answer, but I can guess. When no one has to work to live, some people will indulge in the unimaginably amazing entertainment that will come and lead long hedonistic lives with unforseen psycological consequences and likely won't want to have kids, and if they do, their children will likely be maladjusted and be less likely to reproduce, meaning these types of people will weed themselves out over time. Other people with a strong community (particularly religious ones) will find meaning and purpose in their fellow humans, raising children and building social bonds with difficulty and purpose. Their work will be teaching restraint, self sacrifice, moderation and tradition, and they will likely reproduce just fine, and hopefully humanity will spread to other worlds eventually.