"With a superintelligence there would be no need for anyone to work. Wealth would be created so quickly and efficiently that we’d be living, at least materially, like kings. While this would solve a tonne of problems, there’s a load it would leave open, people would need to find other ways that work to find meaning."
This kind of thinking is short-sighted and ignores the fact that the vast majority of people around the world do not do work that can be easily automated and replaced by AI (or to put it another way, the tech world =/= The World). Physical labor, conservation + environmental work, and services aren't going to be replaced by AI + robotics anytime soon (if ever), at least not without wholesale changes to the way we structure our physical environments. If we look at futurisms where basic needs are met by replicators and increasingly powerful computers fulfill most of our tasks (eg. Star Trek), what we find within them are modes of organization and values that prioritize human ingenuity, physical labor, and exploration, even when it's much more rational to send an unmanned probe to Ceti Alpha V than the Enterprise.
AI might very well eliminate a lot of white-collar 'bullshit jobs', or at the very least increase productivity levels to the point where revenue growth is completely decoupled from headcount. It will probably also clear out a lot of mediocre content creators, exacerbating the pareto distribution that already exists on their favorite platforms. I suspect this is where a lot of the paranoia around AI eating the world comes from. But the world is made of atoms, not bits, and at some point one has to get into the business of moving atoms in order to create wealth and have an impact.
"With a superintelligence there would be no need for anyone to work. Wealth would be created so quickly and efficiently that we’d be living, at least materially, like kings. While this would solve a tonne of problems, there’s a load it would leave open, people would need to find other ways that work to find meaning."
This kind of thinking is short-sighted and ignores the fact that the vast majority of people around the world do not do work that can be easily automated and replaced by AI (or to put it another way, the tech world =/= The World). Physical labor, conservation + environmental work, and services aren't going to be replaced by AI + robotics anytime soon (if ever), at least not without wholesale changes to the way we structure our physical environments. If we look at futurisms where basic needs are met by replicators and increasingly powerful computers fulfill most of our tasks (eg. Star Trek), what we find within them are modes of organization and values that prioritize human ingenuity, physical labor, and exploration, even when it's much more rational to send an unmanned probe to Ceti Alpha V than the Enterprise.
AI might very well eliminate a lot of white-collar 'bullshit jobs', or at the very least increase productivity levels to the point where revenue growth is completely decoupled from headcount. It will probably also clear out a lot of mediocre content creators, exacerbating the pareto distribution that already exists on their favorite platforms. I suspect this is where a lot of the paranoia around AI eating the world comes from. But the world is made of atoms, not bits, and at some point one has to get into the business of moving atoms in order to create wealth and have an impact.