The Endless March of AI. Where it ends.
What’s the end of where we’re headed with technology?
Some people avoid thinking about it completely. Other’s come up with some of the most Charlie Day level stories you’ve ever heard (talking about you Alex…).
I’ve seen all perspectives and most people think it ends in one of two ways: paradise or complete destruction.
The truth just might be a combination of them both.
Take a step back and look at where you are. Look at all of the high-speed advantages within an arms reach that your ancestors couldn’t even dream of after being awake for 12 days..
Every day history is made with new groundbreaking discoveries. One day it’s 500,000 theoretically possible life-saving compounds, the next day it’s a ultra realistic video created just using text, like you’re reading right now.
AI is incredible when used properly.
Imagine how long it would take to cook a meal for 10 if you didn’t have a knife. Would it actually turn out good? You’d definitely have to be creative.
The thing is, AI is simply a tool to help you reach your desired goal, just like a knife.
And similar to how a knife is used to prep a delicious meal and cut it into bite size pieces when it’s time to eat, AI has the ability to help us create true masterpieces in nearly every field.
Imagine AI in the hands of a deeply determined humanitarian or research scientist. The amount of progress they would make by removing 95% of the manual, repetitive work that no one likes to do anyways would only be good for everyone.
On the other hand, a kitchen knife can also hurt someone in the wrong hands. Just as if someone with bad intentions had access to unrestricted AI.
I believe that with the overwhelming amount of care the people responsible for AI oversight are giving, the most likely result is prosperity with AI rather than ruin.
The current trend of remarkable progress day after day will continue and only enhance our quality of life by making it easier than ever to provide back to our communities.
The most likely ending of AI is prosperity.
The exact path it will take is a complete fog, but there is a realistic path that can be charted between innovations.
As most of us have seen, AI is everywhere. At the time of writing, Sam Altman posed that ChatGPT users are creating 100 billion words per day.
That is a mind blowing amount. If you’ve seen the scale difference of 1 million to 1 billion, you can get an idea of how many words 100 billion really is.
Just by 1000s of people typing a few words and telling their computer exactly what they want it to do.
If that didn’t surprise you, have you seen the text to video models yet?
Considering AI had trouble with fingers a few months ago, the videos we’re seeing today are simply impressive, which is a massive understatement.
The rate of growth is exponential like nothing else in history.
Things can’t grow forever though, can they?
Let‘s see, shall we?
First, text to text — type something and it gives you the answer you’re looking for.
Next, text to image — want to see a depiction of basically anything, tell it what you want and have it pop out.
How about text to voice — clone any voice and have it read something in a voice that would fool their mother.
And, finally, text to video — tell it to create your favorite childhood movie, only this time like you always wanted it to happen. Make your own homemade Disney princess.
What happens when you put all of that together?
…
Magic happens.
The likely end of AI is prosperity.
When considering the ability to create nearly anything with words, it opens up the question of what’s really possible.
What happens if the 1000s of new miracle chemicals we can theoretically synthesize are actually made?
If you look at the current state of AI, you’ll see certain areas are already outperforming human experts, while others are whimsically lacking.
It’s conceivable to think that in the near future, doctors and lawyers will be phased out of their active practicing roles and into a more supervisory role to a more accurate AI.
When AI can consistently pass the USMLE and score in the top 1% of medical practitioners, it will simply be safer for them to handle certain procedures than for a human to do it.
Eventually the profession of medicine changes drastically.
Around this time, there will likely be several new combinations of miracle technologies released every week, if not day.
The race for the next super resource is on!
By this time, AI has long since broken down the language barrier and allowed people to speak their native language freely and have it be understood in any language.
Real time translation between all known languages sure would cut down a lot of confusion, wouldn’t you think?
We would soon realize that we all have a lot more in common than we think.
The breaking down of language allows for never before seen collaboration and sharing.
Many, if not all, of the 3rd world countries are starting to benefit from the enhanced level of productivity AI has brought.
Even though there is still a long way to go to fix some of the major issues, it’s looking like we might have a new, shared horizon.
Countries are banding together to solve issues that were previously ignored because of being unsolvable.
Things continue to speed up at an unprecedented rate as new technologies pave way for newly created wealth and power.
Soon, things take a swift turn for the worst.
Wars break out as everyone realizes that the last wars to ever be fought will soon happen.
Discussions are underway with nearly every nation about a combined treaty which aims to establish a core definition of human rights that will provide a global standard to uphold.
This will be overseen by a United Nations Artificial General Intelligence (UNAGI) designed to prevent all universally regarded acts of war.
Whatever resources you’re left with as the new world order is realized is what you will have as the entire world unites for the last time and agrees to no more mass human on human wars.
The last wars fought with real people come to an end.
The power struggle ends with very clear victors by those that acquired the most resources.
It was close, eerily close, but the world didn’t end.
Everyone agreed, in their own language, that it’s pointless to fight when everyone has the ability to end the world. It’s better off to just restrict the ability to create harm with that technology and use it for positive uses only, such as we do with nuclear energy.
Restrict the ability to create malevolent AI by empowering benevolent AI.
Eh, as long as I can watch Netflix, I’m good.
…
Right?
With war off the table, nations have to set their sights on something new.
The miracle compositions currently in use provide highly efficient energy which enables free or drastically reduced costs to travel to space.
Instead of a race to the stars, how about a collaboration in the stars?
Once space is a free frontier, AI will be trusted to explore and document our solar system, uncovering resources that completely upend certain industries that rely on their scarcity.
It will take some time, of course, but those resources will inevitable be used to further humanities reach in the stars.
By this point, we developed so many new technologies that it’s more likely that there is a known theoretical way to do something, it’s simply beyond the current technological ability.
Give it some time and the unending exploration of humanity will span the entire solar system. Not much time really. In the grand scheme of things that is.
We’re just getting started in our backyard.
Speed up an undetermined amount of time, everywhere you look there are space probes that create more space probes that create more space probes…
Soon enough there are talks of something called a Dyson Sphere.
And from this point on, things start to get really fuzzy.
But hey, at least we’ve pretty much figured out how to recycle by this point… ????
