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As @2rafa and others have mentioned, ML will be a step change in how human society creates value and interacts with the world more generally. Once we've achieved AGI, roughly defined as having an AI that can act at the level of an ordinary human, our ability to solve problems will drastically increase.
Intelligence is the generic solver for essentially any problem. Sam Altman himself has said that by 2030 he envisions a world where every product and service will either have integrated intelligence, or be angling towards that. This means that our phones, laptops, PCs, will all obviously be intelligent. However what most people don't realize is this technology will also effect our coffeemakers, stoves, thermostats, glasses, and practically every other technology you can think of. I'm sure adaptive clothing will exist soon with camoflauge like capabilities. People will be able to get realtime instructions into headphones telling them exactly how to complete each task.
Even these predictions only scratch the surface. If the true promise of AGI comes out it will also let us break through issues in hard mathematics, create brand new drugs, find extremely dense and powerful new materials. It will help navigate endless layers of bureaucracy, effortlessly pruning through the thousands of regulations that hold up large projects, helping us pinpoint ruthlessly where cost is added to solve the cost disease problem, and generally help unstick our public works. We could be building scintillating skyscrapers of filament-thin materials with bridges across the sky that glisten in the air, all in a decade. The future is truly difficult to even envisage, let alone predict.
In terms of comparisons to other revolutions, @2rafa says below:
I agree that the agricultural revolution led to issues, a la Scott Alexander's review of Against the Grain.. That being said, I find the comparison of the AI revolution to agriculture as facile. Ultimately the reason the agricultural revolution proved bad for us was that we shifted our lifestyles from nomadic culture to a static culture - which inherently leads to problems of physical fitness, freedom, social control, and cultural institutions have to rapidly shift.
With the AI revolution, we have no idea how far it will go. The possibility space is far beyond what could have existed for any previous revolution. As doomers say, we could all die. We could all transcend our fleshly forms and become gods in ten years. China may create an ASI and lock us all into a totalitarian doom state forever.
The stakes here are far higher than the agricultural revolution, and I highly doubt our situation will parallel that trajectory.
At the end of the day if we can survive the AI revolution without any horrible outcomes of the x-risk or s-risk variety, I think it would be ridiculous to posit any sort of negative future. With intelligence at our fingertips, we will be able to finally achieve our potential as a species.
Where have I heard this one before?
Seriously, this seems too specific to be a coincidence. Was it a deliberate reference?
Thought your link led to this
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Nope. I actually don’t like referencing that story because I think it’s pretty short sighted, although does have some interesting ideas.
This is a very common thought in any hard sci fi that has AI. Manna is by no means original just popular in the rat sphere.
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