Every time I am on the internet and I see people talking about AI, they obviously bring out the bad things; but when they talk about the good things, they usually claim that humans will not have to work anymore (that can be bad, but I am talking about the positive side of it) and AI will provide us with all our needs and humans will all be able to concentrate on what matters most, etc. I’m just curious what your thoughts are on this claim because I personally don’t believe it.
It’s fairly clear that AI will both solve and cause problems.
But currently it’s humans who cause an awful soup of two things:
- inflating the merits of AI
- deflating the merits of humans
For example, commercial management at work places around the world have for decades down-played human merits such as the creativity and experiences of workers, in order to cut costs and eventually replace such workers with others who are neither creative nor experienced. Instead CEOs or methods are being credited for being geniuses or the like with the help of PR.
But with little need for human creativity or experiences in current offices or factories, it’s easy for management to replace humans with AI. No-one will notice the difference, or that’s the assumption.
At the same time the public is flooded with videos of self-driving cars, robots doing carpentry or dancing etc. Everyone is offered free chat bots, and we see reports of celebrities who swear that their chat bot is conscious.
It’s an ongoing social engineering project more than a genuine technological breakthrough. AI has been around for decades.
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AI will solve trivial and minute problems, but create huge serious problems for human civiliastion.
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Hmmm. How can AI help us with our basic human nature?
Isn’t that what really needs changing, if the current race to hades is going to get moderated in anyway?
Too much is never enough?
Me, me, me, mindset? (our self-serving nature)
Rejection of sober pragmatic scientific thinking in favor of magical dreaming?
Our self-absorption and general disinterest and disregard for our global biosphere, atmosphere, not to mention the other life forms it supports?
Seems to me those items are what’s driving blindsided “progress” and entry into a truly dystopian final chapter of humanity. AI won’t change that, only speed it up.
Sorry to sound so depressed, been watching this march since before the 70s, while those around me assured me there’s nothing to worry about, all is going according to plan. 
On the jobs thing; jobs exist to fulfil needs.
If AI does everything then we are free to work on our own hobbies or even grand projects – there’s no prospect of humans not having goals or desires.
The usual rebuttal is What if no-one can afford AI goods and services? But of course in that case AI would have little to no effect on the economy.
Now, I don’t want to make this sound too glib. There are still dangers but it’s not about the number of jobs per se. It’s more things like whether there is still rewarding work and of course the short term chaos of, for example, people investing huge time and money into learning an expert role that overnight becomes fully automated.
I take relish in saying that AI, in the past 4 to 5 years its been around, has solved more problems for more people than any human living or dead. That’s a record that’ll stand for millennia to come, unless humans master breeding. I believe some are already quite proficient, presenting themselves as noble sires of the highest quality. God bless the universe. 
I agree with this and I would emphasize it. AI is a great tool, but to use a tool, you need some knowledge at what you are doing. Tools are just part of the process of creating something. Here the human is irreplaceable.
The debate about AI follows the debate about the internet, about personal computers, automatization and all the innovations that have been created since the industrial revolution. We can understand that these innovations do have had dramatic effects on our lives, just as when the cheap automobile came to market and retired a lot of horses and diminished public transport. Yet there is this simplistic idea that we won’t need people as machines/computers/AI take their tasks and we will end up just with people having more free time.
Well, here the economic realities of supply and demand are forgotten.
As with any revolution, the industrial revolution or the agricultural revolution, yes, they put out of work a lot of people and many professions died out. But the next generation wasn’t out of work. Many simply got new jobs. If earlier the vast majority of people worked in agriculture and now only a fraction do that, this didn’t lead to hordes of poor unemployed people roaming the land in search of food. The fact is that no revolution can truly succeed if the effects are negative creating huge unemployment and hence less demand.
Perhaps the real issue is that in order to use AI, this great tool at it’s best, one has to have a good knowledge about the task at hand. Otherwise the users ignorance will make AI not so effective as it can be.
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That is not really what I was talking about when I mentioned AI. I was referring to it as a technology like any other, which, as anybody can witness, has not solved our problems. Vaccines, antibiotics, transportation, the internet, and the fridge—all these technologies that we didn’t have thousands of years ago—did not solve our problems. They did solve some, such as child mortality for vaccines and food spoilage for fridges, but we still have problems even though we have all this technology. The question is really: will AI finally allow humans to be problem-free, or will it—like other technologies before it—solve current problems only for humans to, as they have always done, find new problems to care about?
Okay, but what would you classify as a “need”? For humans to survive, all they need is air, water, food, heat, clothes, reproduction, shelter, and sleep. I am pretty sure there are enough of those on Earth for all 8 billion of us to fulfill our needs. Yet, people still work. Why? Because human desire is boundless; they will always want more. The real question here is: will AI solve our problems to the extent that no human will ever have to work again? Will AI let us attain a level of prosperity where no humans could ever want anything more? I do not think that will happen, as history shows us otherwise.
I didn’t really understand. Could you clarify?
Well exactly; this is indeed what I meant by “there’s no prospect of humans not having goals or desires”.
But my point was that technology like this can’t ultimately make us worse off. I think some people imagine a future where everyone is poorer because they are unemployed, and the rich use AI for everything.
Now; it’s true that wealth inequality might be increased – indeed this already appears to be the case. But it can’t reduce our standard of living. If you and I cannot afford AI-made goods and services, then we’ll continue making goods and services for each other. Jobs are not granted from on high from a holy priest; they exist to fulfill needs.
So I am sanguine about the future prospect of AI doing virtually all jobs humans do today. It would mean all our basic needs met and we can spend our time trying to find higher fulfillment or working on higher projects or whatever.
Seriously, we won’t care. No-one today mourns the loss of lamplighters or people walking in front of cars with flags.
OTOH countries with a strong work ethic and aversion towards welfare may fare poorly. America might prefer to give people busywork rather than “handouts”.
AI solves problems, that’s its thing. AI has millions of subscribers. People are paying to access expert AI. 2 + 2 = ?
The question isn’t about any specific problem, but the ultimate human problem, which I believe is boundless desire. And I don’t think AI will solve that, as no technology before it ever has.
Maybe I wasn’t clear with my first response, but for me, boundless desire is a bad thing, and that IS the problem I am talking about. What I really want to say is that since desires are boundless, AI will not bring anything more to us that our current technology doesn’t already bring (it will just replace some desires with others, but not end desire as a whole). The question is more about civilizational too; every new technology brings good (like medicine) but also useless new desires that don’t change the human condition of wanting in the slightest. Will AI solve THAT? I don’t think so, as past technologies have shown us.
I think a clever chap has trained you to jump to bizarre conclusions. Desire, boundless or whatever, isn’t the issue. Au contraire it’s the lack/absence of motivation to work on global warming/poverty/pathogenic microbes/organized criminal gangs/political weirdness/and so on that are the hard problems of human civilization.
AI has offered realistic solutions for these problems. If thou dost not believeth, just go chat with a bot.
I disagree, with the caveat that the future holds the answers to many of our questions.
I disagree because humans hold the power of Override. Security, ethics, trust, and exceptions are situations where discretion is frequently, if not always, the critical element in decision-making.
Right, for an open-minded individual, family, or small community that’s certainly possible. In larger contexts, or wherever there’s a lot of money or prestige involved, bad decisions are typically hidden from scrutiny or explained away or tolerated because no-one dares to “rock the boat”.
I don’t think AI will cause more disasters than human decision-makers already do. Nor will AI solve “all” of our problems.
I understand the point. However I do think that some developments have given us greater control of our desires, particularly relevant literacy and education. People certainly have some sense that pleasure produces a treadmill and some desires are destructive. These are insights from Aristotle and Epicurus but they have become more wide spread in society even if they remain extremely fragile. The question is perhaps whether AI can support more enlightened approaches to flourishing or will undermine that. I am slightly optimistic.