As for UBI, it's one way of addressing the fact that our civilization is mature enough to abandon the concept of having to work to be able to live (not to mention, non-bullshit jobs are steadily disappearing).
Or at least make the concept universal. It's been alive and well for the ruling classes for centuries.
But that's all irrelevant in any case, because the issue in question here wasn't working or not-working, but having to work to be permitted to live. Most of us have to. The ruling classes don't.
But, thus far, our best AIs are simply pattern recognition systems strung together like Christmas lights.
There's also no reason to think that 'intelligence' can be exponentially scaled or that any system can recognize how to improve itself -- or have the capacity to do so in situ.
Completely agree. I do believe calling current run of ML/DNNs "AI" is stretching it (and I expect to be hit with the "AI is a moving goalpost" argument but seriously? is it a moving goalpost for those who know how the current generation of solutions work?).
> There's also no reason to think that 'intelligence' can be exponentially scaled or that any system can recognize how to improve itself -- or have the capacity to do so in situ.
There's no reason to assume otherwise. Exponential scaling (i.e. "intelligence explosion") may be a contestable assumption, but really, we're in big trouble if a general AI reaches human levels. We know this level is possible because we exist. Even if AI did just that, we'd have to contest with a new sapient being, and give it ethical consideration. But I see nothing preventing that AI from being as smart as 10 or 100 humans combined.
The rest really follows from nature of technological artifacts - if you can make one, you can make one thousand (applies to both hardware and software) and make it work as one; you can iterate on it, and if you can, then a human-level AI will be able to do it too.
Who knows, maybe in a 1000 years? i don't see it happening in our lifetimes.
And what are all those AIs supposed to be working on? Based on the direction it's currentlying heading, it looks like we'll just be getting more the same stuff we don't need.
If AI is going to help humanity, it needs to be applied to maslow's hierarchy of needs. 99% of society still isn't past the first row. Look at the bottom row, it's pretty simple: Shelter, Food, Water and by extension to afford those things: transportation and medical insurance.