Thankfully, I don’t have to follow every statement OpenAI CEO Sam Altman makes about the world. Many of these statements seem more like a “hustle” or “pitch” than attempts to speak thoughtfully about the future. Even if they are genuine statements of faith, they often read like a teen’s first sci-fi novel, written under the influence of weed and in high doses. star trek.
Consider, for example, Altman’s blog post “A Gentle Singularity,” which was published last year and read by nearly 600,000 people. Its central thesis seems to be that AI is all upside down; Everything has been great so far, and everything will be even better in the future! I mean, just wait until we make robots that we can put these AIs into – then tell those robots to make more robots.
If we were to build the first million humanoid robots the old-fashioned way, but then they could operate the entire supply chain – digging and refining minerals, driving trucks, running factories, etc. – versus building more robots, which could build more chip manufacturing facilities, data centers, etc., then the rate of progress would obviously be quite different.
Everything is getting better; Seriously, it’s getting better and faster Thanks to “self-reinforcing loops” like this. The downside? trick question! there are none Real The downside is that people get used to things. quickly. Just listen to how great it’s going to be:
The rate of technological progress will continue to accelerate, and it will continue to be the case that people will be able to adapt to almost anything. There will be very difficult parts such as entire categories of jobs being lost, but on the other hand the world will become so rich so fast that we will be able to seriously consider new policy ideas in a way we never could before. We probably won’t adopt a new social contract all at once, but when we look back in a few decades we will see gradual changes on a large scale.
If history is any guide, we will discover new things to do and new things to want, and assimilate new tools quickly (job changes after the Industrial Revolution are a good recent example). Expectations will grow, but capabilities will grow equally rapidly and we will all get better things. We will create even more amazing things for each other.
Perhaps you’ve looked around the world lately and wondered whether “creating even more wonderful things for each other” is really a good description of what you’re seeing.
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