Why the AI future will be awesome

datadrivenangel

Author is misguided: "Designing energy stores the size of an AAA battery, but with the capacity to power a cruise ship, is hard, but possible." is false.

unethical_ban

They missed "AI analysis implemented as an infinite number of authoritarian servants documenting the physical traits, locations, behaviors and associations of all people 24/7" in the "really bad" column.

Grombobulous

I understand and maybe even agree with the general “vibes” here, but I think we need to be careful about making the assumption that AI will just figure out every style of “hard problem.” It’s been really great for certain problems. It may even “cure cancer.” As it stands, AI is good at specific things and not all types of things. Yet.

mpalmer

Hand-waves the negatives and the positives. Makes no real effort to contend with the drawbacks of AI, and leaves out the biggest one (IMO) - the potential harm created via delegation of arbitrary authority/capability to AI, whether in government, industry, or military. But we've apparently solved alignment, so maybe it's OK. The rest is essentially just a short list of consequential problems facing the world, with "maybe AI will help us fix it" tacked on to each paragraph. The last two problems don't even mention the role AI would play in their solution. That's a bit of a tell.

swader999

If it can make a web page responsive and keep in bounds when I zoom in the font that would be a glorious future.

watwut

The really bad Will be used for mass surveillance and for further destruction of the democracy. Will be used to create powerful monopoly. Will make climate change worst due to huge energy consumption. This will be unfixable, because tech CEOs who will have more power do not care at best and are far right actors at worst. "The alignment" will be defined by the people who already shown themselves sociopaths.

lukaswthoms

This would be a great essay from a 3rd grader.

AIblemblio

I find certain points woo wishiwashi. I think its very reasonable for AI to speedup superconductor finding which will make medical scanning a lot cheaper, easier and better. It will also allow for massive and easy energy transportation for large distances like afrika/spain <> europe. In medicin understanding DNA and the results of it could lead to solving cancer and dementia. New better batery chemicals will help us for solid state batteries. no AAA version of this but up to 1000kwh/kg + low temp and high temp stability and very stable against burning. Physical ai will solve human labor.

VCFundedGenYer

Terrible ostrich article. It just basically ignores all the issues and goes "guys, it will be great, stop worrying! There's nothing to worry about!" Pure schlock.

busssard

CO2 capture is limited by thermodynamics sadly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBN9JeX3iDs The materials science and biology part yes, it will be awesome. but the question is always qui bono. First we will have the end of propriatry software and everything moving to the cloud. Even PC will end to exist with Microsoft pushing hard on their M365 virtual computers. Who will receive these new materials. I am looking forward to "Diamond Age" becoming reality. But it will be hell of a ride

dTal

Biggest danger of LLMs as they currently fit into society: the radical consolidation of information flow through corporate-controlled bottlenecks that make current generation algorithmic social media (rancid as it is) look like child's play. When people no longer "search" for things, but simply "ask ChatGPT", the lever of social control is nearly absolute. (Of course, all this is up in the air. If LLMs become commodities, the situation becomes very complex; the information flow doesn't get quite so consolidated, but it still becomes impossible to tractably analyze, as all the LLMs train off each other)

singularity2001

We will get incredible abundance and health before the singularity. After that, all bets are off (almost by definition)

palmotea

They forgot this bullet for the "seriously great things on the horizon": * Those fucking annoying workers, we don't need them anymore! Most of them can go FOAD, literally. That leaves even more money and resources for the only ones who really deserve it: the extremely wealthy.

joeconway

This is perhaps the most ill informed and misguided thing I’ve read on the internet this year. Within the span of a few sentences the author states that humanity ending bioweapons are no big deal and that LLMs are perfectly suited to solving nuclear fusion? Atrocious