AI is one of the most strange things I’ve ever worked on. On one hand, it is profoundly capable technology, a sort of plural solution to many real world problems that works magically. On the other hand, people seem to feel a boost of serotonin rejecting it being used to encroach on their economic turf. So much power, and yet so much quiet but diligent resistance. People want to get credit for it’s work but avoid anyone knowing that it played a role in it. It seems like people are consensus resisting it, while also consensus secretly trying to benefit from it.
People just can’t seem to make their mind up about AI. It cuts across so many levels of human psychology that it can be hard to place it within one quadrant or label or category. It confuses our minds to the point of some kind of scoped down psychosis. All it seems to have done in practice is to make it so that long term thinking people aren’t able to think long term anymore, and short term thinking people aren’t able to think long term any more than they were before. We are shortening our prediction horizon while we delay the inevitable march towards AGI.
Here are some things I think will happen as a result of AI:
- We will realize sooner and more viscerally that a great deal of work that happens in the economy should not be automated, but rather not happen at all
- We will realize how much of our identities stem from the feeling of being in scarce supply, busy, important, spoken for, unavailable and intelligent
- We will work about the same amount as we do now, because most work in not in service of immediate survival needs calories wise but rather one of the goals above
- We will be a little less satisfied in our work across the board as the intelligence sword of Damocles hangs over even the best outcome for agentic AI and AGI
- We will still by and large be satisfied in our work and seek it out despite what some communist Subreddits might have you believe, because it is meaningful and because AI won’t provide for much of the needs that are listed above for people
- We will have overall higher functioning and less boring jobs, which are overall more focused on people as the interface rather than software (e.g. AI enabled support humans)
I think these things are already happening. It’s pretty easy to get credit for predictions when the trend is already here and you’re just labelling the facts. I’m curious to see where these things end up even a year from now. My guess is alongside all of this will be more existential dread, but I’m also guessing that we’ll have the technology and freedom of expression to spread ideas like this without injury to person. Remains to be seen but overall I’m curious to see.