by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Given what is going on the world at the moment, I’m reminded of how a lot of technological advancement — like TV — was paused because of the advent of WW2. It makes me think that all these Singularity-type macro trends that we’re beginning to see will have to wait until we figure out the endgame of the Trump Problem.
It could be that the very first thing we have to address after there’s a Second America Civil War and the accompanying WW3 will be the Singularity. At some point in the late 2020s, Humanity will have to put on its big boy / girl pants and figure out if it’s prepared to collectively deal with the dangers of the imminent Singularity.
The key thing I’m worried about is not so much the cultural but the economic. The capitalist imperative would dictate that unless we can come to some agreement with our new hard AI overlord regarding a carve out for what is exclusively human that the real problem is going to be not that hard AI will destroy Humanity, but rather Humanity will freak out becuase it won’t have anything to do.
I mean, asking a hard AI a question that causes it to create new software is very, very easy. Sure, there might be some training necessary in general terms so the software that was created did what was needed, in the eyes of a capitalist, that’s a liberal arts problem, not something that would require the type of pay seen in the software industry these days.
This is not to say that somehow, someway our transition into a post-Singularity world won’t in some way result in the creation of MORE jobs in the end. But not only could the transition be catastrophic, but it could be that the era of the global middle class is about to come to an end.
Any back-of-the-envelope scenario about a post-Singularity world indicates that either Humans will worship a hard AI as a god, or there will be no middle class because capitalism simply can’t justify paying someone a lot of money to ask a hard AI a question.
Programmers make a lot of money because programming is HARD and requires a lot of training to do well. If all you have to do is ask a hard AI a fucking question to design software…your typical capitalist would probably use a college summer intern to design all their software going forward.
Let that sink in.
