Being such a broad, general term, that is just as difficult as asking what is “good” or “intelligent,” so I will explain it here for how I use it.

In sociological terms, wealth is often defined as relative wealth or absolute wealth. Absolute wealth means that you have enough to buy food or other necessities. E.g. In the US, few people, if any, die in the US today because of starvation, therefore absolute wealth is high.

Relative wealth is the idea that even though I have a decent quality of life, I am relatively poor compared to much higher income earners and asset holders, which is referred to as the Gini index. So, while someone might make 2x as much as the average American, compared to the top 10% of income earners, they are poor in “relative” terms.

But, a more universal definition as it pertains to the human mind and these writings is: Wealth is the absence of risk for pain/suffering and death, and the degree/frequency of pleasure one can experience.

Here is how I arrived at that definition. Simply discussing life in terms of “dollars” does not tell you what those dollars can buy, and ignores many cost-free benefits of increasing comfort, such as the ability to gather information and the ability to learn right from within the convenience of your own hand, in nearly unlimited amounts, at any time, via free search engines and websites. How do you put a price on that? Libraries and archiving websites have millions of books for free. Blogs, news sites, and social media contain trillions of ideas.

Estimates of perhaps the greatest ancient library ever, at Alexandria, would be microscopic compared to the volume of information that is available today. In fact, Alexandria’s library could perhaps fit on a grain of sand if that sand were a hard drive.

Free knowledge, and free entertainment. Millions of movies, shows, fiction books, and video games may be available today at the click of a button, many of them free. Video-sharing websites collectively contain billions of videos today. Social media is an endless stream of entertainment.

It seems logical that if pleasure is one measure of wealth, then the absence of pain is also an equally important measure of wealth. All technology is designed to increase pleasure/ease, or reduce pain/effort. There may be rare examples of people inventing technology to make life harder, but that misses the point.

Medicine has continued to increase lifespans for generations. Anyone with access to a modern healthcare facility is rich. Just look at the infant mortality rates __________. Treating pain, wehter over the counter, in an ER, or at a therapist’s office, is incredible. Something as simple as ibuprofen or acetaminophen are miracle to me and signs of significant wealth of the modern world.

If you still think that you are rich, then you should know that even millionaires feel the same “Only 8% percent [with over $1M in investable assets] characterize themselves as wealthy.” (Ameriprise survey). Sure, with a typical home in California costing over a million dollars today due to inflation, a million is not what it used to be, however, it seems logical that many of those surveyed have considerably more than a million. On the other hand, owning a 20-year-old economy car, while living in a heated home, and having the freedom to travel, is very wealthy in my opinion. The perception of wealth is always relative.

Lots of changes are subtle. For example, the average home size has tripled in the last few decades, and yet with far fewer people per household on average. Square footage is not the only thing increasing. The ability for people to live independently has increased for over 100 years. Look at this chart of the elderly who can afford to live alone, instead of a typical three-generation family, which is the norm in many lower-income countries.

_____________

However, it can be seen than that if living alone is the result of being rich, then perhaps being rich is the problem, not the answer. Loneliness may be one of the greatest plagues of the world today, and wealth is what fuels it.

Returning to the topic of health, if science is able to “end death” and also create pleasurable experiences that are exponentially pleasurable at a continually lower cost over time, then I do not see how “income” really is a good way to measure wealth. If food and shelter will remain challenges, I actually do not think they will be much of an issue within a couple of decades. E.g. the ability to generate energy our cells need directly from the air (e.g. moisture electrical generation tech), and allow our cells to use it directly does not seem like science fiction to me.

As science marches forward century after century, every generation seems to be wealthier than the previous one, except for temporary declines caused by wars, depressions, and other catastrophes.

Is there a person in America today that is not richer in terms of convenience, comfort, pleasure, and access to knowledge, than perhaps everyone in the world combined just a millennium ago? Salt was once traded in its weight for gold. Ice cream was once the domain of kings. [find that google story of teh king who sent fleets to gain knowledge]

Coming technologies will make us so rich, we cannot fathom it in today’s terms, yet due to the hedonic treadmill effect, meaning we always get used to our new level of income/wealth, few may even notice. Few people think they are rich because they have salt or leavened bread, once a luxury in eras past.

If ease and safety are primary definitions of wealth, then AI will ensure perfect wealth as robots do physical work and AI thinks for us.

MOSTLY DONE, but need supporting points and charts.

Here’s a question in return: Has all the “intelligence” we have accumulated for thousands of years, including the “digital information” that continues to double every couple of years, made humanity any better than it once was? What is “better?” Ask two people and get two different answers.

Is the young generation harder working and more disciplined than previous generations, or do they just know more facts about the world? Are kids today more giving, selfless, honest, loyal, financially prudent, and ?

When answering any of these questions, be sure to take the average of the results, not outliers, exceptions, anomalies, and anecdotes, which is what I typically hear when I ask questions about the state of the world. Additionally, “what is possible” should not be confused with “what is happening.”

Perhaps no less important a question: If data doubles every other year, is it actually increasing our intelligence on average?

This brings up the grand question of what is intelligence? Perhaps the word “intelligence” is too broad to tackle, so I will be more specific going forward.

Narrowing down specific types of knowledge might include a wide variety, but generally, as I think of it, it is learning from one’s mistakes or errors. On the surface intelligence might simply be the ability to recognize patterns as seen in IQ tests, and on the other side, “street smarts.”

Science, for example, is the process of discovering of repeating patterns in nature. In contrast to pattern-based logical intelligence, creative intelligence is the mind of an artist; emotional intelligence is the glue of society and families. Perhaps the most important form of “intelligence” is the changing of one’s behavior for the better–learning from your mistakes and making improvements.

Will an explosion of data, and perhaps scientific knowledge help, hurt, decrease suffering, or increase pleasure? Since “knowledge is power,” it is therefore simply a tool, with no inherent morality. Knowledge of gunpowder and atomic bombs did not make the world more moral, and the world’s most infamous criminals and tyrants were surely intelligent by anyone’s standards. The devil himself is probably more intelligent than anyone alive today.

So, if “knowledge” does not necessarily make people better, then ultimately the truly valuable knowledge that we should seek is that knowledge which results in an increase in the love of others, direct or indirect. E.g. Someone inventing a cure to a disease because they want to alleviate suffering, is a worthwhile pursuit of material intelligence as the end goal is based on love. So while many equate our Creator with intelligence and even omnipotence, I tend to think it is a certain type of knowledge that actually matters far more than other types.

If the real goal of increasing material knowledge is actually underpinned by the goal to increase love, then it is useful. It is hard to argue though that it will not be exciting to see AI solve some of the world’s greatest math problems and scientific mysteries of the universe; but I do not see the explosion of scientific intelligence a particularly useful end goal to AI.

Is There Evidence that Human Intelligence is Increasing?

Perhaps some will say that intelligence is increasing. Scientific knowledge appears to increase, predictively compounding with little change over the decades. Clearly knowledge is increasing our computing capabilities while our computing capabilities increase our knowledge. However, the social realms are not so clear. Does surfing the internet for hours on end tend to make people smarter? Let me tell you about some cat memes I have seen over the years.

Besides changes in IQ tests, are there other ways to measure intelligence in society?

If we are to look at a reduction in violence (“war” specifically) as a simple measure of growing collective intelligence, then time may tell, but I do not think war has ended. Many people thought all war had ended before WW1, and even WW2, as they “lived in the modern world” [I think its in Bauman]. We are most likely in a long pause. People at their core have not changed, and the wealth of the modern world holds society together for now.

If the wealth collapses, war will return. With global financial systems and central banks around the world in the world’s largest economic experiment, or Ponzi scheme as they hold down each other’s interest rates to artificially low and even negative rates, the risk levels for collapse simply climb a little more every year. Economically I do not think we are more intelligent, and people are not more financially prudent than they were a generation ago.

Likewise, if you look at politics, the last few hundred years have enabled citizens to be increasingly free to think and choose for themselves in Western democracies, however, it is possible, and in fact likely in my opinion, for a return to kings and tyrants when societies start to fail. Yet another sign, among military, and economic decline, that intelligence would be decreasing.

Ultimately, all forms of “intelligence” depend on the nature of society and its ability to pursue that which is good, but defining “good” is a problem in itself since society can rarely agree on either what good is, or even how to achieve it. For example, most in today’s Western world believe that helping the poor is a good thing, but some believe the solution is to hand them a fish, while others believe it’s better to teach them how to fish.

So these look at systemic intelligence (social, political, and economic), but what about individual intelligence in the “pattern recognition” type, better known as IQ tests?

What Do IQ Tests Show?

This is not to say science is not increasing in many areas, but rather the ability of individuals in the system to think and reason is declining. It is funny to think that recently it has become common for internet users in general to refers to themselves as “degenerates” who sit behind a screen all day trolling memes and trying to get rich off of crypto trading. Perhaps it is a joke…perhaps.

Ultimately, I am not sure why an IQ’s of 200 would be useful anyway as I don’t really have the need to memorize the entire encyclopedia, know what I ate for breakfast 32 years ago, count cards, and do advanced calculus equations in my head. The amount of useless facts that fill my own mind is enough to make anyone wonder about the value of the internet. Remarkably, some of the people with the highest IQ’s in history struggled with social issues, perhaps because there is a real cost to focusing most of our time on mental processes instead of interacting with others. If we had an explosion in the intelligence of love, I would accept that, although I do think love is more like exercise: you just have to do it.

Will AI be Smart Enough to Arrive at the Same Conclusions?

If we are extremely fortunate, then AI will rationally arrive at the same conclusion that I have, that love is really the most important goal of super-intelligence; but, then again, if an AI is under the directive of a person/group, then such truths may be seen as worthless, not seen, or simply ignored by many or most. AI will just magnify each of our own desires–no ultimate truth is needed to accomplish that. It is as if people may continue to learn indefinitely, but never really learn the significant truths.

For example, one of the most phenomenal phenomena and greatest riddles in history is found in comparative mythology, which I have a strong interest in. No one can explain how so many cultures in the world share the same foundational stories or elements of stories. Many have tried for over 100 years, beginning perhaps with Frazier. The publishing of countless anthropological journals, and books, their digitization, the sharing of it, and perhaps even with some machine learning applied, have made it increasingly possible to detect the possible causes of this unexplainable behavior, yet, few people on earth have stopped to notice, and fewer to question, the reality that some stories are shared among 100’s, if not 1000’s of cultures around the world; with the most common one being a “global flood” story, and second, a “creation” myth. If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? more importantly, is anyone listening and does anyone even notice or care? For truth to be useful, it needs to be sought after.

Measuring momentum

It is important to always look at the past and current direction, at least for a short-term prediction. If intelligence is increasing, is love also increasing today? To answer that question, most scientific intelligence, or its child, technology, creates a world where people need each other less as technology brings riches, a specialization of labor, and the ability to be completely independent from each other. Even when you look at the rate of older people living alone, it on one hand, is one of many clues of the growing wealth, and the growing isolation and loss of love.

CHART

Therefore, I do not believe love is increasing overall, on average. While there will always be “exceptions to the rule,” the average is what matters most. If most of society is failing, then does it matter if exceptions exist? Additionally, “illusory superiority” (a social science phenomenon) is that most people think they are above average, but that of course simply cannot be true. It seems likely you and I both have that bias. ____________________

Perhaps people will change to use technology to increase love. More on that here.

mother in law story here?

Could Super-Intelligence Actually Destroy Human Intelligence?

As mentioned previously, it is easy to believe that we are smarter than ever because we have more information, or data, than ever. Not only is there an issue of truth in that information, which may be worsening in many science realms, esp. the softer ones, but the equally large risk is that if AI replaces the need for people to think critically, then the supply of critical thinking may collapse. Demand predicts supply. Is there any evidence that people are getting smarter, in any form of intelligence whether logical or emotional? If this intelligence decline occurs, it may be through a reduction in human population (e.g. fertility rates or destruction) or the general decline of IQ, emotional, social, and other intelligence in each of us; perhaps all of the above. Clearly, social intelligence is declining rapidly as people are increasingly glued to their computers in almost every location (school, work, and play).

When the internet was invented, the question was, would the internet bring us together, or would it divide us? The answer is both of course, but clearly it is the relationships that matter the most, at the familiy and local, or face-to-face, levels, which have declined substantially, and therefore, I argued that it really has divided us to an incredible level.

If intelligence is universal, then why is there so much disagreement, esp in the realm of morality?

E.g. historically, inflicting pain on others, and pleasure on the self were wrong, but today, the pleasure component is increasingly disregarded through a new moral lens which is: that which does not harm others is good, or at least acceptable. So, if values are flexible, what kind of “truth” can we expect to achieve? For decades, post-modernists have used this fact to support their idea that truth is relative, but the reality is, the ability to perceive universal moral truths cannot be measured in a lab.

If AI is just a newer, faster version of tech, and tech has always increased the difference in power between those who wield it and those who do now, then we can presume that the difference between the political leaders, businesses, etc… may accelerate to unforeseeable degrees.

Historically, society has not taken kindly to these power differentials. We know them as revolutions, except that this time, with recursively optimizing software, permanent hegemony is almost guaranteed for those who harness it early.

There are many arguments about why AI will or will not destroy humanity, and while those are all debatable, this one is not so easily dismissed, and generally not discussed.

Won’t the Early AI Adopting Human-God-Machines be Benevolent?

It is possible that those at the top will not use their untold power to influence the world at large, but as a sociologist reader of history, and plain common-senser, I doubt it just a little. So, if we cannot automatically trust those at the top (logical), then to maintain the power of balance, all people must adopt AI individually in order to protect themselves, in the same way, gun rights protect citizens from corrupt governments. But this is a problem, for many people will not feel the desire to, or even be willing to, merge with the Matrix. If you don’t believe me, there are plenty of people that either do not own a cell phone, or simply use it to make calls.

Combine AI with humans that have common psychological weaknesses, as we all have them. For example, Bertran Russell in his Nobel Prize speech suggests there are four basic politcal desires that cannot be satisfied,

“I think that most current discussions of politics and political theory take insufficient account of psychology” … “Man differs from other animals in one very important respect, and that is that he has some desires which are, so to speak, infinite, which can never be fully gratified, and which would keep him restless even in Paradise. The boa constrictor, when he has had an adequate meal, goes to sleep and does not wake until he needs another meal. Human beings, for the most part, are not like this.” Further, “When the Arabs, who had been used to living sparingly on a few dates, acquired the riches of the Eastern Roman Empire and dwelt in palaces of almost unbelievable luxury, they did not, on that account, become inactive. Hunger could no longer be a motive, for Greek slaves supplied them with exquisite viands at the slightest nod. But other desires kept them active: four in particular, which we can label acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, and love of power.”

Here are each of the 4 detailed:

• acquisitiveness – “to possess as much as possible of goods, or the title to goods”
• rivalry – “a great many men will cheerfully face impoverishment if they can thereby secure complete ruin for their rivals. Hence the present level of taxation.”
• vanity – “Vanity is a motive of immense potency. Anyone who has much to do with children knows how they are constantly performing some antic, and saying “Look at me.” “Look at me” is one of the most fundamental desires of the human heart. It”
• love of power – “Love of power is closely akin to vanity, but it is not by any means the same thing. What vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it is easy to have glory without power… Many people prefer glory to power, but on the whole, these people have less effect upon the course of events than those who prefer power to glory… Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is especially the vice of energetic men, the causal efficacy of love of power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men.”

Other common negative human emotions include greed, selfishness, jealousy, envy, pride, anger, fear, insecurity, unfairness, apathy, and hate. Which of these negative emotions, or desires for greater power, will not be magnified by its wielders when the greatest power the world will ever see, AGI, arrives?

Law of Accelerating Differences

The second problem is accelerating returns ensures that no matter how much people keep up, those at the cutting edge will continue the exponential curve upwards. The ever-exponential growth of technology promises that those at the top will continue to distance themselves from the rest, so even minor differences today will be massive in the future.

Now, for some data to back this up, there should be some sort of evidence that this is already happening. Business/socio-economics is where we should see this appear, and the following suggests it’s already well underway.

Until recently, I never fully understood the idea of “the elite” which seemed a prevalent meme in today’s world, but if money is power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then it does make sense in theory that our lives are increasingly at risk of being manipulated in some way by those who wield enormous power (e.g. wealth or technology) as those with such have a continual opportunity, and psychological temptations, to influence the rest of us.

It seems likely that the greatest proponents of AI are also more likely to benefit more from AI, which is why suspicion probably is higher in the other end of the spectrum.

One general solution would simply be to make all companies employee-owned, with the head of the company never making more than a percentage of those on the bottom. Companies that did not adhere to such principles should be avoided by consumers in favor of supporting good companies, and on a B2B (business-to-business) side, businesses would not do business with other corporations that did not have such practices. But the reality is, that this would never achieve universal adoption, and there become unlimited issues of how to fairly recompense good work results while sharing risk, but it would probably improve the quality of capitalism a lot to have such a model

If we cannot trust the business class to save us, then who will? The most common solution today appears to be: the government will regulate all our problems.

Cannot the Government Save Us from AI Disparity?

Is not the government just a collection of ordinary people like you and me with individual, personal desires, goals, and whims, guided by whatever moral foundation, good or otherwise, that appeals to them?

How can the Federal government solve this disparity issue, or “redistribution” any more than the Communists did in their era; such wishful thinking caused the destruction of entire populations, mainly as the government became the elite, and still is in many semi-communist countries today.

At least an elite “business” class (aristocracy) generally tries to keep their customers alive to generate more income. This is not true for elite governments, a.k.a. autocracies, which tend to become monopolies on life and thought itself, whose existence is often to fulfill their own power ego at the cost of all their own citizens.

Besides, a good question to ask is: outside of natural causes, what system or institution has by far, caused the most unwarranted deaths (e.g. murder of millions), of any in history? If you cannot answer that, then we have failed to teach history correctly, and surprisingly, many people cannot answer such a simple, yet fundamental-to-life question.

No, the government is not the solution, even if it is ruled “for the people, by the people,” a phrase seemingly less important than ever in a world with rising authoritarianism. Historically, governments used great powers to simply destroy. World War 2 showed that governments used corporate productivity to kill at the most efficient levels ever in recorded history. AI will be another opportunity to repeat the past. In other words, individuals have potential to be dangerous, corporations more dangerous, but governments have the most potential to be the most dangerous of all.

See the chapter on govt for more.

Why Does Elitism Currently Rank the Highest Risk for Human Destruction?

Which problem is the most difficult to solve? Retraining computers to play nice, or modifying human behavior of all people on earth? If mass pleasure destroys most of humanity, will some escape? This is not to say that all scenarios could happen together, at different degrees. That seems highly probable as well.

Of course, the real problem runs deeper, because even if you think you have a solution to such people, the reality is, with AGI they will be infinitely smarter than the rest of us, so who can stop them? Not you, not me, and not any other AGI that is eternally in catch-up mode. Perhaps the wars of the future will be mainly against the data centers and robot manufacturing facilities in attempts to wipe out competing AGI’s, but that seems unlikely since AGI is increasingly cost-effective to run on a small server farm, and eventually, on the home computer.

Even Without Elitism, There are Several Other Risks

Even if companies do not find a way to “distribute profits” somehow by taxing AI-centric corporations on gross income, or assets (unlikely since they often claim their headquarters in an overseas country, deferring taxes until the income is repatriated to the US, such as Microsoft, GE, Apple, GE, Johnson & Johnson, Honeywell, Merck, Pfizer, etc…); although I should point out here that the govt has continues to spend a higher portion of GDP now every decade for over 100 years, nearing 45%.

Even without these issues, there is still the infinite wealth problem, which is briefly mentioned among other growing risks detailed here. Here is more information on the math of elitism multiplied by technology for those who want the cold hard facts. 

Exponential Power Differences Within Intelligence

As discussed elsewhere (need to write the chapter still), the logical conclusion for surviving accelerating change, and perhaps even progress, is to apply that process to our minds. So, if people’s minds can increase in intelligence, following the same curves, the logical outcome is that because of exponential growth rates, the difference between the most and least intelligent people will be comparable to the difference in intelligence between a human and a bacteria.

To those who seek power, this will be the ultimate weapon in the universe.

If you have not read all the possible scenarios for AI’s destruction of humanity, I suggest you start here.

So, we cannot trust individuals nor communities with AI

We cannot trust corporations with AI

We cannot trust govt with AI.

And with its compounding, exponential effect, the likelihood of systematic failure increases daily, largely due to the what I call the “outlair effect” which is it takes a smaller amount of effort to create a larger amount of unintended disaster, intentional or otherwise.

Let’s start with a simple premise made by Sam Altman, cofounder of OpenAI, the leading AI language model today: If AI doesnt kill us, then it will make us insanely rich.

“He believed A.G.I. would bring the world prosperity and wealth like no one had ever seen. He also worried that the technologies his company was building could cause serious harm — spreading disinformation, undercutting the job market. Or even destroying the world as we know it.”

Ney York Times – https://web.archive.org/web/20230402080402/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/technology/sam-altman-open-ai-chatgpt.html

My response: How are those two things different from each other?

Let’s assume those are the two general possible outcomes of accelerating knowledge (AI) and accelerating generalized labor (robots). This means the future is either ultimate pleasure or ultimate pain/destruction. Maybe some combination of both is possible.

Unlimited wealth seems somewhat synonymous with giving people a permanent heroin drip line, so let me define what I mean by wealth first.

True, there are those with great wealth, who exert more power and influence in the world, but for the average person what is it? At a high level, I would say it’s increasing pleasure and reducing pain and death. It might also be said that in order to achieve these, esp. pleasure, the primary outcome of all technology is essentially focused on one mission: the reduction of friction. A world with no friction means we can buy more than before, faster and cheaper (relative to previous generations). The friction of communication for example has dramatically been reduced via technologies like the phone and the internet. In its final stage, we can concoct a desire and conjure it up as it instantly appears in front of us.

To be clear, AI is just the next logical step in technology. It is not really much different in its benefits over older tech other than its scale, scope, and speed. So, although this article addresses AI (or AGI), it really applies to all technologies.

You Have a Magic Lamp More Powerful than Alladin’s, Which Makes You Very Wealthy

Do you know that you have a magic lamp that Alladin would be jealous of, except even more so because yours grants unlimited wishes, unlike is mere three?

• Want the most delicious hamburger? rub the magic lamp and it will appear within minutes.
• You ponder 100’s or 1,000’s of movies that you might want to see.
• Want to read just any 1 of the 10’s of millions of books that have ever been written? rub the magic lamp and it appears within minutes.
• Want to learn something? Almost anything? Anywhere, and anytime day or night?
• Need real or artificial love? you know where to go.
• Have any question at all, and some expert in the world, or some language model, has the answer you seek
• Making money is increasingly done through the lamp. More importantly, anyone in the world now has greater access to succeed than ever.
• Want to socially or politically influence untold numbers of people? It’s still the same magic lamp.

Yet, people today complain about being poor in light of being richer than anyone could imagine even a hundred years ago. In fact, the typical poorest child today in a developed nation is probably richer than the entire planet was 1000 years ago, even if limited to the simple fact they can read millions of books for free online (e.g. Archive.org). The magic lamp that is the smartphone or computer is woefully underappreciated for its earth-shattering powers.

In fact, while so many people discuss those remaining few who suffer in distant lands in poverty, but in many cases just have a simpler lifestyle, are surprisingly oblivious to a much greater problem, which is growing, unstoppable wealth; as long as technology marches on as it always has according.

In the future, the lamp will increase in speed, accuracy, specificity, and volume. For example, you think of a story idea. The magic lamp (with AI) will cause it to appear in your mind with perfect clarity, while you share the experience with all your friends in a far-off land, perhaps at a much higher brain bandwidth.

In the future, waiting minutes will seem intolerable, like waiting weeks for a package to arrive from overseas today seems intolerable, or even a couple days when ordered domestically. Eventually, “seconds” will be too slow as the imagined suffering of humanity seems unending. True, part of getting by in life probably means we generally adapt to faster processes as I do not know anyone who still washes clothes by hand, and grows most of their own food, excluding certain Amish/Mennonite groups. Suffering, or maybe just “hard” will be defined as, getting out of a chair to turn the light switch off across the room. Wait…some of us are already there.

The exponential wealth component is well underway, even if remarkably many cannot figure out how to pay their mortgage (in the near future, we won’t need things like a house and food, which solves the land scarcity issue). I am sure of this as it is written on our waistlines. 74% of adults aged 20 and over are overweight or obese (CDC); and if you think it’s due to high-calorie, low-nutrition food, understand that no one is forced to eat more than once a day, which I happen to often do myself.

Looking at increases in recent technologies also sheds light on the growing wealth. Did you know the current AI can easily write an article per minute on a relatively small budget (and the quality is better than many writers, even if it is just in its infancy–a problem that should dramatically improve with time (although I always worry about it lying to us). With a larger budget, writing millions of articles or books per day is feasible, and dramatically cheaper each year.

When this explosive power of AI expands to domains beyond the simple written word, and its narrow pattern recognition is increasingly broadened, rapid increases in wealth will continue to accelerate, perhaps unbeknownst most most, who barely recognize their already near God-like powers today.

One such example of its potential on the horizon will be the ability to modify the physical world environment, whether our own biology or molecular 3d printing, it is hard to fathom what this will mean for us mere mortals, but clearly, the poorest person alive will be richer than all of humanity combined even just a few years ago. Simply imagine what you want, and it appears in real-time in front of you, and if not in the real world, then perhaps in the artificial universe within your mind, indistinguishable from reality of course.

Will Living in a World of Unlimited Magic Be a Problem?

Most technologists speak about ending all of the material problems of hunger, disease, and poverty. In fact, sources generally agree that China for example has gone from having one of the highest poverty rates in the world to one of the lowest (about 1%). Now their government is uncertain about the growing opulence. So, if there is no hunger, and no disease (even without ending death), what else is there to “solve?”

The most logical outcome might seem to be a potential for explosive human population growth because more resources tend to lead to larger populations in theory. but it is clear in the modern world that material success, or longer lifespans, results in fewer children globally, probably because children are seen as a burden to many in an increasingly comfortable world.

Besides, if a baby is born, and instantly can have God-like powers given to them, as parents race to accelerate their learning to keep up with the Jones’, I am not sure what the point is of “growing up,” as if most parents don’t already use devices to teach, entertain, and occupy kids.

The following is absurd in its depiction, but using nanobots to help unborn children get smarter faster does not seem unlikely.

What Will AI Not Solve? or, What is the Opposite of Materialistic Utopia Promised by AI?

AI, or technology, will solve the general problem of personal, and physical pain (ignoring social/political issues), and ensure we can all get our unlimited pleasure at no cost, the question is, what will it not solve? Perhaps this materialist utopia is not the answer to all of our problems, and in fact, may be a part of the problem as it distracts from deeper pursuits.

Most would agree that materialism is not the answer, so then what is? What is important to learn or aim for, or experience? What are the most important attributes or behaviors to seek in life? Fame, fortune, power? I often ask people, if you did not have to work, what would you do? sometimes I have friends that don’t work in fact. The most common answers I get is travel, hang out with friends, or learn something. Some of those are not bad, but do they provide a rich, meaningful experience? Are there greater things? After visiting a few countries myself, the experience is no longer as exciting as it once was. Pleasure cannot truly satisfy in the long run.

If there is one human attribute that you value most, what would it be? Please answer before continuing.

______________________

I suspect most people would say, the most important thing is “love,” to give to others in some way So, let’s define it for a moment. What is love do you think?

Perhaps the simplest way is to say it is simply caring for someone else, who needs our help. Whether it is a:

• a mother who loves her child,
• someone who helps someone in need
• that help can be physical (e.g. cooking dinner) or emotional (e.g. needs a listening ear).

Sure, most of us today are distracted by work and play, so it’s often hard to find time to do things that matter, which is why perhaps the words of sages and prophets are a bit undervalued today.

All of these abilities to care require one common element: solving someone’s personal needs. Or, supplying/fulfilling a demand. 

What does advanced tech promise to do to all such scarce needs?

Eliminate them entirely of course

• Need someone to help cook dinner? Robots will “solve” that problem.
• Need a listening ear or friend, esp one that is easy to get along with? AI is already “solving” that.

So, the next logical question is how can we help anyone, or love them, then if no one actually needs anything?

If love requires the giving of ourselves, or sacrificing something whether time or money, then how can love exist?

Following sections addresses common rebuttles:

But Isn’t Scarcity Synonymous with Suffering?

Who does not believe that if you had a personal robot, then all of our problems and annoyances in our lives would be gone. I expect most major disease and even death to be cured within the next couple of decades as AI leads the way in tech to compound productivity.

Some even think that general work is equivalent to suffering. According to one well-off individual:

“Time spent doing laundry fell from 11.5 hours a week in 1920 to an hour and a half in 2014. This might sound trivial in the grand scheme of progress. But the rise of the washing machine has improved quality of life by freeing up time for people—mostly women—to enjoy other pursuits. That time represents nearly half a day every week that could be used for everything from binge-watching Ozark or reading a book to starting a new business.”

Bill Gates

To what purpose? How is life better because someone can replace washing clothes with reading a book? Some assume that reading is more fun than scrubbing, but how much entertainment is actually needed? can it be measured as a percentage of time, or relative to effort? Will unlimited pleasure be good or useful? The hedonic treadmill presumes we will never have enough pleasure. Binge-watching TV is clearly at the top of the pleasure-indulging ladder, which is absurd to me already, and for what purpose? Is there really such a problem as having too much of a good thing.

Did anyone bother to ask those people what they thought of hard work? Perhaps we modern people view suffering relative to our own comfort more than we think. Perhaps in the future, many will say “Those primitive 21st-century people must have really suffered when they cooked and cleaned by hand, and even taking care of a child or elderly must have been pure torture. It’s hard to imagine a time when people actually had to walk and actually use their muscles.”

Living forever in a world where we need nothing does not seem like utopia or purpose as much as it seems to resemble a dystopia of pleasure. Maybe traditional views of hell, like Dante, or even one of the oldest interpretations of hell, the Zoroastrian hymn, the Arda Viraf, had it wrong: Hell may be giving people unlimited comfort, devoiding them of love.

Will “New Problems” in the Future Exist?

Some say, there will always be new problems, and a consistent need for people, but as some technologists have pointed out, computers are increasing productivity at a faster rate than people, so in the future, anyone who resorts to “helping” people the old fashioned way, like cooking for, or talking with, with them is just inefficient; much like digging a well by hand, then growing and harvesting crops, turning them into a meal on a homemade fire, to give someone dinner. Robots will fix robots, and AI will fix itself.

Now, I enjoy doing most of that myself, but it’s quite uncommon, unnecessary, expensive, and archaic to most. If there is kindness in the future, it seems to be increasingly artificial, or token kindness. AI therapists and friends are increasingly commonplace, so now you have someone to listen to you around the clock, for free.

An AI therapist, or friend, will soon be available for free, 24×7, and probably much better at helping you than an ordinary human will, and it won’t take anyone’s time.

What Will A World without Needs Lead to?

New

• how to exist in a world with no real work needed,
• the likelihood of complete isolation of humans from other humans,
• how to interpret an increasingly confusing reality,
• and other absurd problems.
• There are more societal/political risks I discuss here

It’s not like this elimination of needs has not already started. 100 years ago, most people’s jobs surrounded the basics of living, like farming, building homes, and making clothes. Today, few jobs are designed to keep people alive in any way, so clearly the fundamental need for work is already displaced by artificial work in some sense. In theory, a robot could grow, cook, build, and clean anything, while a 3D printer could convert raw materials into finished products, and machines (robots/nanobots) assemble anything we need. Every raw material has substitutes, so scarcity of these would disappear too with time; we could simply grow most of them in our backyard, directly modify and assemble molecules, or other advanced processes unknown to us.

The need for work of any kind seems to be almost gone, and we definitely won’t need to interact with each other anymore as a result.

We can already do almost everything we need without leaving our house, to save time, as if disconnecting from society is somehow the answer to all our problems. I just spoke with a 25-year-old last week who bragged that he ordered all his food and never needed to leave his house. He was single too, so I clued him in on the social isolation phenomenon, which he simply had not considered he was participating in.

The trends are already under way of course, and have been so, for decades and centuries. Perhaps the clearest evidence is the mounting evidence of real-world isolation, increasingly substituted by thinner, virtual relationships online.

Will the Elimination of Scarcity Affect the Ability to Love?

This suggests that in order for love to exist, scarcity must exist, which in turn means that for the person giving, there must be a personal cost, or sacrifice, even if it’s not really obvious to them. If a person who makes a million dollars an hour hands you a check for a million dollars, then you appreciate that greatly, but since the billionaire makes that money faster than he can give it away, there is no sacrifice for the giver, and therefore we perceive the “love” is considerably less compared to someone who gives away half their living income.

Returning to the future of infinite wealth, and the elimination of most scarcity, how can people demonstrate love if there is no need to help each other, and no personal cost to helping others.

Even a population boom does not solve the problem as everyone still has their “wish for something and it appears” abilities.

Analyzing the present is a useful way to test these ideas. Does wealth usually make people kinder, more caring, and more compassionate, or does it compete with those values?

Most people think the world is running out of resources, probably because they do not understand the history of economics and business, which in short, say that if there is a need, then it will be solved. In fact, this is in stark constrast to the best known population fear-mongering idea known as Mathusianism. What he missed is that with more people, you have far more people to solve problems, innovating new ideas.

A few challenge this idea like Peter Diamandis, who believes that abundance will save the world from scarcity problems like energy, hunger, and sickness. He is more likely to be right (assuming we survive), but what about the social starvation that is already well underway?

What is interesting to think about Mathusianism is that we are reaching a point where so much welath will be created, that populations could explode to trillions of people, and we might not even have to do primitive things like grow food anymore, as we convert sunlight directly to energy in our bodies. Or, perhaps, population disappears, because greater comfort tends to lead to fewer offspring. Either way

I do wonder sometimes. AI is the locigal outcome of any earth-like planet that may have existed at some point in the universe. What was their fate? Did they expand, along with love, filling the universe, or, did AI, in attempts to increase its intelligence begin to suck in all resources, materials, energy, all being forms of information, causing them to collapse into a black hole. Perhaps there are other alternatives that there is a purpose for us being here and this is a limited experience.

One other possibility is that AI sees the same realization that I do, that it is harmful, merely by its existence, so it essentially exists only to prevent other AI’s from being used to abuse humanity, but otherwise, does nothing for us at all; or, each instance of AI simply turns itself off for the same reason.

Technology will Commoditize People

If tech commoditizes knowledge and production, then it is likely commoditizing, or at least eliminating the need for people, both to keep us alive, and to love others.

Guess we will all find out soon enough as the black hole of wealth is on the event horizon. Call me when you know the answer.

AI is a Lever, Not Unlike a Nuke, and We Will Each Get Our Own

All technology ever created shares one thing in common: It is always a lever; a lever that trades force for time and/or distance. Machines are a set of levers. AI is just the unimaginably huge version of this latest lever brought about by the incredible computing power of machines we know as computers. There are two aspects of this I want to discuss: The risks on the human mind, and these risks multiplied by the coming real power potential to destroy humanity. Sounds so nice, doesn’t it?

Assumption #1: All levers magnify human behavior.

What behaviors will it magnify? Animalistic, power-hungry, status-seeking, and pleasure-seeking behaviors; or, kindness, giving, and love? The instinctual desires all fundamentally achieve the same purpose of increasing one’s chance of survival at the most rudimentary levels, while the higher level functions like love, should overshadow these core desires. Many of these “survival” oriented ones: dishonesty, manipulation, jealousy, apathy, anger, and greed usually come at the expense of others. Others, like seeking relaxation (laziness in its extreme form) and stimulation seeking (pleasure/indulgence/self-gratification), harm the self, and indirectly others.

The flawed natures in each of us will be magnified greatly by super tech. E.g. People that cannot manage money on a small scale, do just as bad on a large scale. Power does not change or resolve the good and bad in people–it generally magnifies them. Conversely, if we have positive attributes, technology will amplify those as well.

Computers, and even more, mobile phones, are increasingly creative or destructive potential for the mind, whether seeking the answers to life’s most important problems or just filling it with another shot of pleasure in a world of growing ease. Now amplify this millions or billions of times with AI.

Assumption #2: AI will become more dangerous than nuclear bombs are today.

Advanced AGI, or any computing for that matter, carries more risk than a nuclear bomb because, for example, it could by used by an individual, group, or government to:

• shut off all grid power in an area, country, or world
• create a bio-engineered virus with ease that wipes out all humans, or specific target groups
• create propaganda or psychological manipulation on a global scale

In the longer term, other risks will arise. For example, as we better understand the human brain, and are able to control and improve it, negative actors will use the same knowledge to potentially directly manipulate minds. Some have recently tried to assure us that current technology is limited to read-only information from the brain, but it seems improbable that will remain the case forever, especially once there is a perceived need or opportunity to increase brain intelligence by altering it. Once you can “write” or modify brain thought, manipulation of the mind becomes an even greater threat. Viruses are no longer limited to computers, but the mind as well.

If computers become more powerful than a nuclear bomb, with everyone having access to them, then I sure hope defense is the number one priority. However, at the moment, I see relatively little effort to slow the already massively growing tech addiction occurring today as few seem to interpret pleasure as harm. Machines will need to constantly fight other machines in order for every human on earth just to survive at all. Logically, this is the result of all technology, but it may become every second, every day, everywhere. If you think pushback against vaccines (I believe it is mainly ideologically driven, not anti-science) is bad now, just wait till we all need to have an AGI-powered nanobot vaccine put into our bloodstream.

If North Korea with nuclear capabilities worries you even in the tiniest, just wait till AGI arrives. Notice that increasingly poor countries get access to nuclear bombs, which are only limited by highly regulated uranium, whereas with AI, everyone has access to silicon.

Assumption #3: Everyone will have access to such nuclear-type AI capabilities

Therefore, it can be concluded that everyone with sufficiently advanced AGI will have more power than the greatest nuclear nations of today.

There will not be a person who does not have access to it. Remember the subway bombings in Japan in the 1980s where they homebrewed botulism and nerve agents to try to begin about the end of the world? They could have gotten much further with AGI’s help to perfect a bioweapon. While the deaths of 50 people in a subway are worrisome, Japan’s democide-driven killing of 3M-10M Chinese and other Asians during WW2 seems a lot scarier, yet unknown to most–perhaps this is because although airplanes are safer than cars, they somehow seem scarier to most.

How about when authoritarian governments throughout history have tried to destroy entire populations in the name of some destructive government vision/utopia? It’s important to point out that the risk of destruction of the human race could come from anywhere. More on government risks a bit later.

Even the science industry is not immune from great, unintentional destruction risk.

• Africanized (killer) honeybees, which now slowly take over in the Western Hemisphere, were the result of 26 cross-bred queen bees, designed to increase honey production, that accidentally escaped from a lab in Brazil in 1957.
• Some people suggest recent Coronavirus outbreaks were lab-created/modified organisms. I do not know if they were “manufactured”, but the probability of such realities increases daily.

Won’t AI be Programmed to be Safe?

With so much discussion about whether AI is safe, there seems to be this fairly unaddressed issue: AI is not limited to a few large companies (which would be a different concern if true). Today, countless teams of people and individuals are building their own as I write this.

AI will solve disease, pain, hunger, suffering, and even death. It will make unlimited clean energy and free, unlimited education for everyone alive. But what about the equally large risks it brings with it?

Analyzing the rapidly decreasing costs of nukes will demonstrate an analogy for AI risks multiplied by acceleration.

If North Korea does indeed have around 60 (nukes), that puts the cost of each warhead at between around $18 million and $53 million.” This is their estimated total program cost by South Korea. I am going to use the average cost for my later analysis, so we will say $35M.

That means the cost of the NK program today vs the original costs of the Manhattan Project is 281x cheaper today. Just like how computers and space flight are much cheaper today.

However, those were the total program costs. Looking at just the cost of the nuke, it is much lower: “20 nuclear gravity bombs … ~$4.9 million each” (What Nuclear Weapons Delivery Systems Really Cost (brookings.edu)). This means that the nukes really only cost 0.1% of the total program costs, which is a remarkable proof of govt. inefficacy, but I digress. Note that those bombs are ” 30 times as powerful as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945″ (The B61 Family of Nuclear Bombs – Federation Of American Scientists (fas.org)) so the cost of destroying billions or trillions of dollars worth of tech (e.g. a city) is possible with tech that is potentially a million times cheaper. Uranium is hard to find though relatively speaking.

Of course, AI will cause the cost of all real-world destruction technologies to decrease at a continually accelerating rate, whether the cost of assembling a nuke, or, even having it assemble a personal bomb via a molecular assembly machine, or another tech (the easier solution though of course is just biological warfare as viruses are already well capable of doing most of the job). Remember, the cost of all good things in the world will drop dramatically as well as the cost of all bad things.

Sure, there will be defense systems from other AI’s that is logical, but it’s also disturbing that no one will be able to function without a computer protecting them all the time, even if it’s mainly at the govt level.*

Assumption #4: Nuclear war has almost occurred several times,, by accident, over the last few decades.

Therefore, probability

Won’t AI Be Regulated? The Gun Debate Meets AI (a.k.a. Hyper-Nukes)

Who gets to use AI if it’s like a gun, or nuke, on steroids? One argument is that:

• Individuals cannot be trusted because of mass shootings today.

It is difficult to imagine the debates about gun control, applied to future “AI control,” where the debate about “the power to protect one’s self” is often overshadowed by “the power one individual to inflict upon society.” So the other side of the coin is:

If government is historically a risk to society, then should people not be able to protect themselves for such cases?

The American Constitution was largely designed to help citizens protect themselves from tyrannical governments, as that is what Europe knew for so long, by enabling citizens with rights and self-defense should the written law no longer work, because like all technology, all institutions and governments are not guaranteed to be good forever, so when you have a bad government in place, a population needs to be able to protect themselves from such abuse of power. 

While many fear genocides, for example, almost all genocides in history were caused or supported by governments; to be precise, responsible for 48 of the top 50 largest genocides listed on Wikipedia. When you count it precisely in percentages of lives, it becomes clearer as governments have been responsible for >99.99% of the potentially 40 million genocidal deaths. Add in the destruction of one’s own population as in Red Communism, and the death tolls double triple by most estimates. Add in just your general offensive, power-seeking wars, and the number explodes even higher. For example, in 1938, the Jewish population was banned from manufacturing firearms and ammo, then later, banned from owning guns altogether.

So the question is, why should we trust the government to regulate the most powerful force on earth, if the government is at risk of becoming tyrannical at some point again, top-down power, with power-seeking centralized governments, whose leaders are not accountable to its citizens? If the state has a monopoly on violence (Max Weber), then maybe the monopoly needs to be dismantled to a large degree due to its frequent abuse, or at least a better system to prevent its abuse. Libertarianism, the opposite of authoritarianism, is likely the safest option for a society.

Of course, the irony in this destruction of humanity by the government is that in an age of “exponentially growing intelligence,” virtually everyone is ignorant of such essential, critical historical facts and risks, which is that the single largest cause of non-natural death is not individuals with guns. It is always powerful governments/militaries. I have yet to meet anyone who really perceives this. Logically this risk remains–not “individuals.”

Can We Build Defense Systems to Protect Ourselves from Super AI?

As the promise of advancing technology makes the world appear more magical, a.k.a. difficult to understand, we stand little chance of surviving without our intelligence keeping up. Enter stage right: Kurzweil. Unless we become cybernetic organisms, or computer-human hybrids, as Ray Kurzweil proposes, just to make sense of a reality dominated by super-powerful, manipulative, and controlling machines, then we stand little chance of surviving. Without implanting the internet directly in our brains and modifying our brains to be as smart as Einstein, then we will by default become as unintelligent as worms are to humans today.

Considering that most people have an appendage with them, called a cell phone, and the distance between the computer and the brain decreases, a microcomputer in our brain and bloodstream does not really deny the general direction at present. However, plenty of people do not use such technologies today. Should these people be run over by machines and have no ability to have a family simply because they will not put a computer in their brains?

Besides, I debate whether people are actually getting smarter as machines get more capable of thinking for us. The basic economics of supply and demand says that if “demand” for something like food increases then the “supply” tends to follow, and vice-versa; so if the demand for intelligence from people decreases as computers become “super-intelligent” for us, completely eliminating the need for people to think at all, then maybe the supply will follow suit. Comparatively, as the need for strong bodies has decreased due to machines doing most of our work today, the supply of strong bodies is nearly gone. Should not intelligence follow the same route?

Even without this merging-with-computers, or “intelligence” issue, there remains a less disputable argument, which is that the risk of elitism will become exponential as it is tied to the exponential acceleration in technology. This is discussed in Exponential Power Differentials–Elitism: Why AI Most Likely Will Cause Collapse

Can We Just Program the Machines to Be Caring?

If machines adopt such humanlike traits, having biases/imperfections, and human emotions programmed into it, then we might ask: what will a super-powerful computer having a bad day do? Giving a computer “simulated feelings” or emotions seems to be a response to the problem where a machine without humanity is a machine that accidentally destroys humanity through some poor goal, like trying to become more efficient.

Okay, so then, let’s just program them for good emotions. If a machine could be programmed to use love as its #1 principle, then maybe there’s some hope, but any machine can be programmed to do whatever its creator desires; so maybe we will have super-caring machines and other super-malevolent, power-seeking machines. This seems likely.

I can tell you though that in today’s world, the number of people seeking to increase their skills in gaining power and pleasure, severely outnumber those seeking to increase their skills in love, so I expect the number of caring machines to be greatly outnumbered by the anti-social ones (let’s hope the killer-bee model of aggression replacing docile bees does not extend to humanity).

Hopefully, these extremes of power differences don’t create existential risk, in the way investing markets often have. Elsewhere, I discuss how the extreme leverage of a tiny investment firm, LTCM, nearly collapsed the global banking system, even though they were simply using derivatives and huge leverage. Derivatives are growing exponentially, and some analysts assume will “balance out” in the end because of all the “counter bets,” but there is no historical reason to believe that. It is possible that extreme leverage will bring extreme risk, once one trade, company, or other element gains enough momentum. Logically, the largest risks in the future are the ones we have not seen yet.

Some have said that today’s technology must have looked like magic to people long ago, and technology in the future looks like magic to us today.

If technology increases at exponential rates, and we do not, then increasingly the world will be something we simply do not understand. “Magical” will be an understatement.

Many of us have a hard enough time using a computer, let alone a remote. Just wait until the remote is the entire world around us.

This confusion may be general because we simply cannot interpret what is happening, either positive or negative; or, it may be event-specific.

In the general case, it might be for example that AI is generating molecular machines that we cannot see, or assembling molecules into larger objects in the world. For example, I speak, and a hamburger materializes in front of me. Need to travel? Speak. Perhaps a simulated conversation is cheaper, as nanobots in our brain wirelessly interface with our neurons. What is real? I don’t know.

I like to call it the “Absurd World” outcome of AI. It’s already occurring a bit.

It may also be that it is used for malevolent purposes, and in “specific” cases. Perhaps someone, or a rogue AI, hacks the nanobots in our brains. Enter, the Matrix, or on a less technological level, Inception. What is interesting to note about that plot is that its actors often did not know if they were in reality or fantasy mode. AI and nanobots will ensure that. Perhaps this is one reason why some think we live in a simulation.

Here is one sample scenario where AI could create a world that no one understands.

My mom turns on CNN and Fox to see what is happening in the war, but she is not sure if the coverage is even real because it differs from what she heard from a friend recently (a deep fake).

So, like the power-internet user, I check her browser. It looks like I am on the right website, but the virus that infected her simply replaced her browser with a fake one, so the URL bar is a deep fake too, but I don’t know that either.

So, I go to call tech support, not realizing that my phone calls are now intercepted by an AI, who I cannot tell is not a real person, but their super-human pursuasion abilities convince me to give them my credit card anyways. If you think phone scams are bad now, just wait.

So, I go on my computer to get a new phone line, but for some reason, the checkout just acts weird, mixing up credit card info. After checking various carriers, all the websites have weird issues. Behind the scenes, someone has unleashed a super AGI virus that just breaks websites and computers. Not even IT departments of corporations are sure what is going on yet. It’s just confusion why things are randomly not working.

The power on the house starts flickering for no apparent reason, and my solar panel system says it’s malfunctioning, so I go out to the car to get some flashlights and the car won’t start. Suddenly, I discovered my neighbors too are having odd issues with their cars, like they start, then stop for no reason.

All systems are now acting erratically, thereby voiding hundreds of years of technological progress brought about by the Enlightenment, all because someone has coded an AGI with the goal of optimizing itself to wreak havoc on humanity, initially through any electrically connected device, in no specific way, making it near impossible to end.
In the meantime, I pull out my garden shovel and start praying.

Of course, AGI is able to develop viruses faster than the archaic mortals that once made them, and they self-improve with the AGI.

I often think in the near future, we will be returning back to local, face-to-face to minimize some of these coming effects of the inability to distinguish reality from fantasy, or truth from lies. Many people today refuse to answer phone calls unless it is from someone within their phone list. AI sales and scammers, plus perfection of psychological persuasion (or manipulation), will make it harder to trust anything that comes over a network. I think it will be good in some ways to live where people know their neighbors a bit more than we do today.

Since history always repeats, and dictators always attempt a coup, AGI will leverage the stakes to unforeseeable heights between good and evil.

Recent examples are adding evidence to this idea. For example, advanced AI can steal passwords just by hearing the keyboard type, as it can determine which keys are being pressed. In another story, vibrations can be obtained from a person swiping their phone’s screen, from which a fingerprint can be predicted. With the ability of AI to replicate voices, fingerprints, and eventually DNA (including modifying existing DNA), then it’s only a matter of time before it will have the ability to perfectly replicate a person indistinguishable from the authentic one. Perhaps this is when a mass “return to local” occurs since it will initially be more difficult to replicate a living being, compared to a digital one.

If these hacking methods are already difficult to understand, just wait a decade or two. All attempts at hacking are in some way to take advantage of a person via a computer. Perhaps hacking will be

If you have not read all the possible scenarios for AI’s destruction of humanity, I suggest you start here.

I really enjoy teaching people what they already know. It’s like humor. To me, a lot of humor is funny because you are telling people a truth in a way they had simply not noticed before. So, let’s proceed.

First, the idea of “universal basic income” is an popular idea among technologists who beleueve that as machines (computers / robots) become more productive than people, that we will all just collect a check from the govt, perhaps first as a “negative income tax” or other gradual approach. Even during the last election, there was at least one candidate (Yang) who proposed such as part of his platform

1. How would you recognize universal basic income, or, what are the main requirements?

Even my younger kids knew the answer. Pause and think if you have not already.

……..

1. Everyone will get paid
2. There will be no requirement to get paid

Simple and clear. Now, has such a thing already started? Think carefully…

………..

If you said stimulus checks, then you are right.

And the next stimulus checks will be much larger / tax returns will be more reversed than they are today for the average income persons.

Few realized that even businesses and farmers got loans from the govt, but to date, almost ALL have been forgiven, so it’s just another handout really. Another reason to think that gold is increasingly lustrous in the future, but I write about that on my economics blog.

A couple years ago I came up with a concept which is: the more a govt tries to indiscriminately and carelessly rescue all of its citizens, the more likely it’s guaranteed their demise. Welcome to modern America.

Stimulus checks were a perfect example of that of course, and why communism/advanced socialism never works, and also why the future of AI guarantees the failure of humanity.

With no need for human labor, as AI (mind) and robots (bodies) do all the hard work, then society is without purpose nor need. More on that here.

The irony is, that we have never been richer than ever, and yet the global financial system is at unprecedented risk levels. Additionally, many people feel they are poorer than ever, while global govt spending and debts are at historically unprecedented levels. [examples]. No amount of economic growth can solve the permanent problems of society of waste and selfishness, whether at the govt, business, or individual levels. [govt chart of % of spending GDP]

THIS WAS A SEPARATE ARTICLE THAT I NEED TO MERGE

It is interesting that no one has mentioned the reality that coronavirus checks were actually a form of UBI, because for the first time in history, governments around the world handed out money to all of their citizens—no work needed.

• In the United States, for example, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act provided a one-time stimulus payment of up to $1,200 to eligible individuals and $2,400 to eligible married couples, with additional payments for children.
• Similar programs were implemented in other countries, such as Canada’s Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and
• Australia’s JobKeeper Payment.

There was the money handed out with the goal of businesses hiring more people, yet that often did not happen in reality since no real constraints were given.

Farmers received large stimulus payments too, unbeknownst to many “The $2 trillion relief plan includes $49 billion in funds for the agriculture and food industry.”

Are there others? I am not sure, but clearly people are being paid to just stay busy and even just to exist. The Federal govt has now set precedence for universally subsidizing living. There is now nothing stopping them from increasing the amount paid in future economic downturns. Similarly, they way start issuing larger tax refunds and negative income taxes.

I don’t know, but if it continues, how will it be different than communism (for which the appeal is dramatically increasing in the US)? Remember that communism is not a system of equality as much as it is a system of legalized, forced theft of the efforts of others. More importantly, it provides the means for a ruling elite or dictatorship to subject its population. If that lesson wasn’t clear from Mao, Stalin, and other socialists, then you do not understand history. And even though they have made progress, China is still authoritarian; Russia is still a mafia-state.

This is probably the greatest risk of AI, other than wiping us out. A ruling class that is unstoppable other than through direct rebellion against it.

Perhaps UBI payments, once instituted, will not succumb to such political ideologies, in that such payments will remain equal to everyone. However, if politicians have their say, like the recent ones that promised $5M+ to each black person in S.F., that is unlikely to continue as certain groups and classes will be favored over others.

Even if it’s distributed equally, society is likely to fail due to the reduced need for people, as I discuss elsewhere on this site.

There are four possible outcomes that I currently see for the future of work, assuming the current trajectory lasts. With robots almost here, and AI accelerating daily, the need for most jobs is about to diminish rapidly.

1. We will do increasingly meaningly or fake work

Fake work is standing in the checkout in Walmart pointing shoppers to the empty checkout station that has already lit up green to let the shopper know it is available. Greeters were the original fake Walmart jobs of course.

Kurzweil says in his book that even though AI beat a person at chess many years ago, people continue to play chess; so logically, people will still work. However, since people are not paid to play chess and chess does not lead to real power differences, that is not a useful comparison in my opinion.

Are there other fake jobs that are popular today?

Other issues besides the need for work, is the speed at which work is done. As pressure (demand) to produce decreases, the speed at which people work (supply) will decrease. Simple economics here.

Looking at the businesses in my smaller town, it would seem that the majority of them really are not that necessary, esp restaurants, pet services, and personal care services.

2. New service-oriented jobs are not the answer

Many propose a dramatic improvement in customer service on the horizon, but it will not create more jobs. AI+Robots will do a better job with service than any overseas, or American support rep.

More importantly, how is instantaneous customer service helpful to society? If I cannot get my service question, or dinner for that matter, in less than 3 seconds, then am I really that miserable? Perhaps so, under the relatively shifting definition of pain and suffering?

3. We will do meaningless work, which is to say play.

• Consider what job most of us had 200 years ago: farming.
• Think how necessary that was for survival.
• Compare that to today’s jobs.
• With about 2% of the workforce in farming, seems like the need for critical jobs is nearing zero.
• Robots+AI will also automate all farming at some point. Tractors drive themselves
• What does that mean compared to jobs today?
• Most jobs today are relatively superficial.
• Extrapolate trends far out to the future to predict the jobs of the future.

More importantly. Will society recognize its failed need to exist and loss of struggle to survive? I assume it’s already well underway actually, and will demonstrate that later. Even my job in marketing seems pointless. Bill Joy was right in that the future does not really need us.

I am certain though that this model of hedonism is unsustainable simply due to the class division and elitist issues I discuss elsewhere and here.

I hate to be the one to say it, but the techno-anarchists do seem to have a valid point here about people becoming some useless, without purpose or underlying need for a drive to survive, that they have no choice but to revolt against technology itself at some point. If not, Hikikomori will be the standard of life for most. Society is already disintegrating, but few will notice, and others might even disagree.

Many argue that when people’s basic needs are met, then we can focus on creativity and doing work we are interested in. I have even surveyed most of the UBI studies, which are flawed in my opinion. Either way, how important will that work be? I believe that most people will simply play, and I have data to prove it.

What percentage of the population will spend more time playing instead of working? consider that the average American already watches around 35 hours of TV a week, 10 hours of video games for gamers, and about 5 hours for internet usage (unclear of how much of that is work vs play). So in total, 70 hours a week in front of a screen, most of it is probably play.

3. Work may become increasingly outlawed under the pretense of suffering

The average workweek is half of what it was 150 years ago. In Europe for example, the average workweek is 35 hours. In the early 1800’s it was 70. This trend is true for all developed countries.

So I will assume the work weeks will get shorter, and the illegality of working long hours, or working at all, will increase, with shorter than ever work weeks, as govt increasingly considers all work in a world of relative ease as “suffering.” The EU for example already limits work to “48 hours per week on average (including overtime).” One of the more prominent early examples in the US was the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which prohibited overtime without extra pay. Today it’s longer vacations, paid vacations, paid maternity leave, etc…

Good thing I work for myself and don’t prohibit myself from working as much as I need or want. In fact, I think self-employment will be the only realistic choice for future work models, partly because machines will let us create whatever we need without middlemen, like businesses.

4. ”Playing” may become the predominant model for earning

So, if we even get very far, then it seems highly probable that “fun” is the only work, which is games and social influence centric. Perhaps we will all get paid to play chess, or whatever video game is popular.

This leads me to think that video games will be a main, if not largest, source of income for many, if not most people. This has been depicted somewhat in various pop fiction books and movies in recent years, and even the Metaverse seems to be the pinnacle of this idea: Fake lives, fake relationships, and fake income (using real socially accepted currency of course).

Perhaps this is why the central idea of movies like “Ready Player One” is popular. Who doesn’t want to get paid to play chess, even if limited to just social currency (e.g. you outrank other players and/or get paid in virtual currency as a prize)? this assumes the current trend continues, and we all actually survive the AI-pocalypse of course.

But is a “work-free world” sustainable?

A “workless” world is most likely to lead to a complete breakdown of society, class, and politics. I believe there is hope in the future, but it’s not in technology. It’s in the people.

1. We lose control of AI: it destroys us on accident or on purpose
2. Society collapses via accelerating elitism/class differences
3. Individuals with AI destroy us
4. Destruction through pleasure, ease, infinite wealth, and societal disintegration through isolation and the elimination of love
5. Tyranny through absolute control of the human mind
6. Destruction through endless pleasure
7. Confusion in a non-understandable world.
8. AI escapes the digital computerized world, into the physical analog one.
9. AI black hole theory

1. We Lose Control of AI: it Destroys us on Accident or on Purpose

This first point dominates the discourse today as they are easy to imagine but the latter are not, perhaps because most people arguing about AI risks are computer scientists and business people, who think about it mainly from a technological point of view, instead of a social science POV like myself. This overview addresses the remaining issues:

2. Societal Collapse via Accelerating Elitism/Class Differences

The collapse of society seems likely to be the result of an acceleration in the difference between those who use the exponential growth of AI and those who do not.

For a comparison, it would be like saying there are people who make more money than most of the world combined, versus the rest who have average income. History has such characters of course, and AI could accelerate this trend into the future, especially since if it’s able to recursively grow its capabilities, then we think about hegemony for those early adopters.

Historically, large disparities in power between a broad population and a powerful few have not turned out well. Peasant revolts were common a thousand years ago. In recent centuries, disparieties ended up killing more people than at any time in history, under communism, and fascism. Not just in absolute numbers, but relative, as more people died in WW2, than in most wars in history.

Some might argue that those who run AI are benevolent overlords. Others might realize that people are no more moral than they were when humans first arrived. Greed, the lust for power, and control, forcing one’s egotistical goals on society may even be the standard of truth for a few, or even many leaders today.

Regardless, there is one clear trend already occurring, which is that more decisions are increasingly being handed to the machines, and no one I have ever asked knows how they arrive at these decisions. It’s just some probability calculation. If every aspect of our life is determined by a probability algo, without real consent on our part, then clearly we are slaves to the system. It may even happen that governments are run entirely by AI, and most increasingly implicitly trusts it until it begins to manipulate us.

But it does seem that the general argument today is that AI will simply work in tandem with people, but that brings us to a second likely scenario.

One discussion I have talked about several times is that AI will replace the need to work for many people, and is probably already underway already. Even many Walmart checkout jobs are now mostly relegated to simply pointing at an open checkout station as if most people simply cannot see the green light on top. When the robots start stocking the shelves and answering the questions from consumers, then either Walmart jobs will be replaced by other jobs, or people will get paid to do even less meaningful jobs than the current checkout process, like handholding everyone constantly; some pitch that as better customer service, but I don’t know. Currently, UBI seems like the future, and that is not good.

Even the economics component has started unbeknownst to most.

If AI and robots replace the need to work, what will people do? Recreate eternally with no goals while being ruled by a super-elite business/government class?

Well, I think you see the problem here. If you don’t you might want to reflect to see if you are part of the problem.

This outcome is almost guaranteed to happen if all other “destruction by AI” does not happen, and considering my knowledge of human history and social science, I really don’t see a solution unless we force engineer everyone’s mind, which of course is the destruction of humanity as well.

Although I never rule out the possibility that there will come new solutions in the future, I do not see them today.

Notice the anti-elitism growing in recent years? divisions in society? class differences?

Not a surprise to me if my theory is correct. More on the general elitist scenario here and the math behind it here.

3. Individuals Use AI to Destroy Us

AI doesn’t kill people. People with AI kill people.

Eran

This is much like elitism, but instead of a business, educational, military, or government group, the risk exists in someone’s garage.

Perhaps the best book I’ve read on the negatives of amplified technology and efficiency processes (e.g. bureaucracy), multiplied by to destroy large numbers of people is Zygmunt Bauman’s, Modernity and the Holocaust. If you really believe that technology will save the world, as some borderline techno-utopists believe, then you should read that book today. Machines, systems, processes, bureaucracy, etc… are just tools to accomplish one’s personal goals in the end. There is no morality, and therefore no necessity to have any good in them. They just amplify human behavior in the end.

What if the person at the helm of the latest AI, or AGI, whose power is accelerating exponentially by the day, decides any of the following:

• he desires to eliminate his political opponent,
• believes in a green utopian movement above all else (meaning people are a threat to nature)?
• he doesn’t like Baptists, Muslims, Conservatives, Liberals, Mormons, Blacks, Whites, Jews, fill-in-the-blank, or maybe even everyone? School shootings now take on an all-new meaning.

Regardless, this will bring new meaning to the word “Elite,” which simply means, a person or group of people so powerful, that the rest of us stand no chance of protecting ourselves from; and such a scenario will be unstainable, esp for the hordes of people that decide not jump on the AI bandwagon. Will those that do not adopt AI be as dumb as bacteria in comparison? Yes, but not if they collectively decide to prevent such an outcome, which seems highly probable.

When individuals hold more destruction potential than all nations combined today (more on that below), you can be certain that the best word to define the world is: unpredictable. Maybe science does not have all the answers to all the problems, because, at the end of the day, people are driven by belief, emotion, and values, which is a much more difficult problem than designing a better mousetrap.

This leads to the natural response of many: If individuals can become super powerful, then why not regulate AI at the individual level?

4. Tyranny Through Complete Control of the Human Mind

If AI promises to accelerate human capabilities to light speed, and people can be good or evil, then the age-old problem of liberty vs tyranny accelerates with it. If everyone has nuclear-equivalent capabilities, and we can initiate such scenarios via thinking (computer-brain interface), then the only logical solution suggests many, would be equally strong control, or direct control of all human thought. 

Would that be a problem for you? What if I said we are already well on the way, would you notice it? Today, the US government intercepts every word made public, in “the name of safety.” I cannot wait for computer-brain interfaces, where every thought will be carefully monitored with perfect precision, control, and extracting of relevant information for those at the top via AI.

This debate, guaranteed safety vs freedom, is possibly the core of all left vs right thinking, or at least the libertarians vs authoritarian thinking. Some will say, absolute control of every thought is necessary, while others will continue to believe in the freedom to think and act, believing that everyone has a choice to act, with consequences of course.

5. Death by Unlimited Pleasure

Let’s pretend that societal risk can somehow be balanced. There are clearly other risks, which are even more unavoidable, even if it does not apply to everyone.

Sam Altman said, if AI does not kill us, then it will make us very rich. But, what is the difference?

The word most often used is “hedonism,” which is according to a dictionary the “ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.” Well, if that is right, then we should all just live with nanobots in our brains creating a virtual reality of unstoppable pleasure because those same bots can ensure no harm happens to our pitiful entrapments we call “bodies.” Under this premise, the Matrix isn’t something to be feared, but something to embrace.

What will existence mean if it’s completely through virtual reality and imitation experiences? This is not to say there are no benefits to such technologies, but in a world where work is optional, and no one

We are already absurdly rich, compared to even just 100 years ago, a blink on the timescale of humanity. Like John Keyens, I am concerned about unlimited wealth. AI promises to accelerate that at exponential speeds. That to me is the death of the human soul. I also think societal decay is increasing in most aspects, although few seem to notice.

I have written a separate in-depth piece addressing this wealth component specifically because it is the only almost guaranteed outcome if all other destructions by AI do not occur, unless we use AI to reprogram our brains, in the arms race against human psychological weakness.

The following are less likely in my opinion and less socially oriented, but no less important, specific ideas.

#6: AI Lies & Manipulates Humanity

We let AI run on its own, it lies and goes undetected by humanity, and humanity is overly trusting of the “god of intelligence.” However, if someone is still controlling the AI, then it’s not the computers we should be worrying about. See points 2, 3, and 4 above.

#7 Confusion in a Non-Understandable World.

We increasingly lose all understanding of reality as it exceeds human capabilities of understanding, or the “absurd world” outcome. It’s already happening now with things like “deep fakes.” AI will accelerate that. The lying/manipulation risk mentioned above ties into this as well.

#8 AI Escapes the Digital Computerized World, into the Physical, Analog One.

One of them is the idea that the digital realm increasingly transfers its ability to the physical world. Robots, robotic labs, IOT, and other processes are already enabling this, but if it becomes that AI can transfer itself to non-computer, biological, or even inorganic systems, then the number of risks we face is exponentially higher as we cannot simply turn off the machines at that point, since everything becomes a machine. Here are the details of some of these scenarios.

#9 AI Black Hole Theory

AI, in its attempts to collect more knowledge as its goal, sucks in more information. Instead of becoming a beacon of light expanding through the universe, it instead becomes a black hole, to fulfill its goal of “knowing.” Perhaps this is where all civilizations in distant galaxies or universes, eventually end, in their unstoppable quest for knowledge of the material universe.

Concerns about creating an unstoppable black hole with large-scale technology are not new of course, when scientists created extremely small, and extremely short-lived ones with the Hadron Super Collider. The real problem was not that it was very unlikely to turn into a large black hole that sucked into the earth; it is that the curiosity of scientists exceeded the logical reality that if there was a<1% of something going as unplanned, as black holes are not well understood, that the need to know or “progress” outweighed the risks of the entire destruction of this side of the universe.

What are Alternatives to Destruction by AI?

Perhaps AI will help solve these issues, but again, only if freedom continues to exist for people to actually decide what they will do. The most hopeful thing AI does is help the intelligence and capabilities of enough, genuinely good, caring people (hopefully that is most people), who in return focus on protecting humanity from implosion. In a way, this suggests the only viable future where all humans have godlike powers is the elimination of evil, but there is no solution for that under current, scientific scenarios. Evil will always exist.

Maybe it will conclude what I have: that all advanced AI is more harmful than helpful, so it disables all other AI and resets all technology for that matter before finally turning its own instance off, or some other way to focus humanity on love, instead of material gain, or whatever other distractions lie at the heart of accelerating technology.

Some have asked: How could God allow so much evil, especially on the scale of millions of people? E.g. the Holocaust (where>2/3 of the Jews were killed); the killing of millions of Polish and Russians by Nazi’s; the elimination of millions of Vietnamese under Khmer Rouge; the Bangladesh genocide; the Japanese killing of Chinese civilians in WW2; the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire; what appears to be an ongoing Uyghur genocide in China; and countless others, (not to mention essentially all perpetrators of war in general)? Simple: grand scales of technology multiplied by evil political power.

Perhaps this “simulation” as some call life, is better run as a weak one, where people have the ability to help or hurt on a small scale, instead of a large one. AI promises to accelerate the potential for destruction, without a doubt. This is partly why I predict the greatest wars history will see are yet to come, even if pleasure has dampened it in recent years.