The reality is that our society as it is currently run requires everyone to work in some capacity to earn a living. We’re about to hit a point where that simply is not feasible, because the majority of the jobs are going to be automated.
Teaching jobs are on their way out likely aren’t coming back. But with them are going to go most white collar jobs generally, and most blue collar jobs, and before too long self driving will be figured out, and then transportation jobs are gone too.
I hope that this meeting is focused around the changes we need to make societally to use this abundance for good, but I know how the slim the chances are of them talking about that, and how even more slim they are that they come up with a solution.
Jules Verne wrote “Robur the Conquerer” about heavier-than-air flight in 1886.
The Wright Brothers first flight was in 1903.
The first commercial flight was in 1914.
The first trans-Atlantic flight was in 1919.
And now the interesting one; the Hindenburg disaster was in 1937. 51 years after science fiction theorized about winged flight, 34 years after it was accomplished, 23 years after it was commercialized… people were still using dirigibles, and it wasn’t going great.
And I’m sure the whole time those people were saying “we’ve been promised that flight is just around the corner forever”.
So to me the interesting question is where on this general timeline are we at with AI? It’s been theorized, been proven experimentally, is now commercialized. Up next is the “transatlantic” stage where its actual value becomes apparent and it becomes more widely available. We may already be there with GPTs.
I’m just hoping we figure out where we are before we hit the Hindenburg point.
"Your point that the world contains multiple problems is a real slam-dunk argument against fixing any of them."