But I think the planners at the top have a long-term vision and know where we're headed. I'm an AI optimist. The world is going to sh*t, and we need something to hang our hat on. Too many people around the world live in poverty and much much worse. It's unacceptable. And the Status Quo has zero interest in changing anything. AI has the potential to force meaningful change through innovation.
We agree that there are a lot of problems. But the sticking point is still what it was the last time we touched on the same topic--how do we get from a for-profit model to an altruistic one? If there's too much money on the table to stop AI, isn't there too much money on the table to allow for the creation of utopia?
The medical examples you cite do indeed show a lot of promise, and it doesn't appear that, in general, they put that many people out of work. But even as these medical advances occur, corporate American is gearing up for massive layoffs. Since health insurance is still largely tied to employment, at least in the US, Timothy is right to point out that all those advances won't even affect a lot of people because they have little or no access to healthcare, and the population in that condition will increase, probably substantially.
We could restrict AI to things like medical data analysis where it can do better than humans. But we're not going to do that because there's a lot of money in enabling efficiencies that allow large corporations to cut jobs. And no one is stepping up to fund universal healthcare and/or universal basic income--let alone universal high income. So income inequality will become even worse, poverty will become even worse, and at some point, there won't be enough consumers to sustain a capitalist economy. If the decision-making is based on money on the table, as you suggest, then what incentive is there to take some of that money off the table to fund a more utopian vision.
In California and other places, we seen how large developers address affordable housing. They push through large structures, using affordable housing as a pretext. But the bottom story is usually retail--sometimes upscale retail. In the floors above, you may have ten affordable units for every hundred regular-priced or even luxury units. These large structures create problems with everything from traffic to air circulation--but they don't solve the underlying problem of affordable housing. Their whole purpose is to maximize developer profits with the tiniest nod to affordable housing.
That's how I see AI. Developers are motivated by profit. They may incidentally do some good along the way, but I doubt it will outweigh the harm.
To Lorri's point, yes, AI is more substantive than some of the .com startups were. But its stock is still valued far higher than it would be if the basis were what AI can reasonably do now. It's valued on what people think AI may be able to do at some future point. And when the valuation so far exceeds the gross domestic product, that leads to crashes. In the .com bubble, valuation exceeded GDP by less than 50%. Now, valuation exceeds GDP by more than 100%. That suggests an even bigger crash than the .com one. Some may survive or even prosper in their wake, but that isn't guaranteed.
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