https://www.facebook.com/samuel.e.jnr/posts/1394951337254533
BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FUTURE
We are about to witness the most unequal societies in history
By 2030 2 billion jobs will be gone almost half of the existing job today. Humans basically have just two types of skills – physical and cognitive – and if computers outperform us in both, they might outperform us in the new jobs just as in the old ones. Consequently, billions of humans might become unemployable, and we will see the emergence of a huge new class: the useless class.
The best armies no longer rely on millions of ordinary recruits, but rather on a relatively small number of highly professional soldiers using very high-tech kit and autonomous drones, robots and cyber-worms. Already today, most people are militarily useless.
The same thing might soon happen in the civilian economy, too. As artificial intelligence (AI) outperforms humans in more and more skills, it is likely to replace humans in more and more jobs. True, many new jobs might appear, but that won’t necessarily solve the problem.
With rapid improvements in biotechnology and bio-engineering, we may reach a point where, for the first time in history, it becomes possible to translate economic inequality into biological inequality. Biotechnology will soon make it possible to engineer bodies and brains, and to upgrade our physical and cognitive abilities. However, such treatments are likely to be expensive, and available only to the upper crust of society. Humankind might consequently split into biological castes.
Throughout history, the rich and the aristocratic always imagined they had superior skills to everybody else, which is why they were in control. As far as we can tell, this wasn’t true. The average duke wasn’t more talented than the average peasant: he owed his superiority only to unjust legal and economic discrimination. However, by 2100, the rich might really be more talented, more creative and more intelligent than the slum-dwellers. Once a real gap in ability opens between the rich and the poor, it will become almost impossible to close it.
The two processes together – bio-engineering coupled with the rise of AI – may result in the separation of humankind into a small class of super-humans, and a massive underclass of “useless” people.
Once the masses lose their economic importance and political power, the state loses at least some of the incentive to invest in their health, education and welfare. It’s very dangerous to be redundant. Your future depends on the goodwill of a small elite. Maybe there is goodwill for a few decades. But in a time of crisis – like climate catastrophe – it would be very tempting, and easy, to toss you overboard.
There is one more possible step on the road to previously unimaginable inequality. In the short-term, authority might shift from the masses to a small elite that owns and controls the master algorithms and the data which feed them. In the longer term, however, authority could shift completely from humans to algorithms. Once AI is smarter even than the human elite, all humanity could become redundant.
What would happen after that? We have absolutely no idea – we literally can’t imagine it. How could we? A super-intelligent computer will by definition have a far more fertile and creative imagination than that which we possess.
We are about to witness the most unequal societies in history
By 2030 2 billion jobs will be gone almost half of the existing job today. Humans basically have just two types of skills – physical and cognitive – and if computers outperform us in both, they might outperform us in the new jobs just as in the old ones. Consequently, billions of humans might become unemployable, and we will see the emergence of a huge new class: the useless class.
The best armies no longer rely on millions of ordinary recruits, but rather on a relatively small number of highly professional soldiers using very high-tech kit and autonomous drones, robots and cyber-worms. Already today, most people are militarily useless.
The same thing might soon happen in the civilian economy, too. As artificial intelligence (AI) outperforms humans in more and more skills, it is likely to replace humans in more and more jobs. True, many new jobs might appear, but that won’t necessarily solve the problem.
With rapid improvements in biotechnology and bio-engineering, we may reach a point where, for the first time in history, it becomes possible to translate economic inequality into biological inequality. Biotechnology will soon make it possible to engineer bodies and brains, and to upgrade our physical and cognitive abilities. However, such treatments are likely to be expensive, and available only to the upper crust of society. Humankind might consequently split into biological castes.
Throughout history, the rich and the aristocratic always imagined they had superior skills to everybody else, which is why they were in control. As far as we can tell, this wasn’t true. The average duke wasn’t more talented than the average peasant: he owed his superiority only to unjust legal and economic discrimination. However, by 2100, the rich might really be more talented, more creative and more intelligent than the slum-dwellers. Once a real gap in ability opens between the rich and the poor, it will become almost impossible to close it.
The two processes together – bio-engineering coupled with the rise of AI – may result in the separation of humankind into a small class of super-humans, and a massive underclass of “useless” people.
Once the masses lose their economic importance and political power, the state loses at least some of the incentive to invest in their health, education and welfare. It’s very dangerous to be redundant. Your future depends on the goodwill of a small elite. Maybe there is goodwill for a few decades. But in a time of crisis – like climate catastrophe – it would be very tempting, and easy, to toss you overboard.
There is one more possible step on the road to previously unimaginable inequality. In the short-term, authority might shift from the masses to a small elite that owns and controls the master algorithms and the data which feed them. In the longer term, however, authority could shift completely from humans to algorithms. Once AI is smarter even than the human elite, all humanity could become redundant.
What would happen after that? We have absolutely no idea – we literally can’t imagine it. How could we? A super-intelligent computer will by definition have a far more fertile and creative imagination than that which we possess.
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