The rise of thinking machines does warrant concern if we anthropomorphize AI as a competitor to humankind. But if embraced as tools amplifying human abilities and liberating us from repetitive tasks, advanced AI systems can unleash new realms of economic dynamism, scientific discovery, and creative achievement.
Far from humanity vs machines, our task now is finding the right balance for integrating complementary human and algorithmic intelligence across all facets of life. If we can achieve this symbiosis, the Fourth Industrial Revolution can usher in a world of unprecedented insight, innovation, and prosperity. ~David Shapiro
David Shapiro is a well informed AI thinker and YouTube creator, among other hats, who isn’t afraid to “speak up” concerning issues created through rapid AI development. His reports from the front on AI’s future impact have solid reasoning behind them. But since this is so very much on the bleeding edge of what is known, Shapiro’s ideas are currently just one way of looking at things with no real consensus to “back him up”.
There are still two camps: the AI Doomers, and the AI Utopians and they have essentially opposite views on what AI will bring. Shapiro tends to say he’s an AI Utopian, but when he says Human jobs are going away, and makes a compelling case for that hypothesis, we can’t help but wonder how utopian such a world would be for us. Perhaps it would be some sort of civilizational advance in terms of what the masses of people do/ would do with their lives. Or perhaps it would be a terrible change.
That’s not knowable today, but at minimum such a huge disruption of the economic and social fabric we know, in a minimal amount of time, looms as a frightening challenge as well as a utopian goal. Utopias have accumulated a reputation as being essentially impossible for the human condition and inherently unstable and dangerous. The advent of AI forces us to understand utopian goals and the concept of “progress” a great deal better than we presently do.
Better, Faster, Cheaper, Safer: Why AI must replace human labor | by David Shapiro | Sep, 2023 | Medium