[Technology] In six years will AI have completely re-engineered society?

[Dibdab]

Whilst everyone is reflecting on US elections and whether its the end of the world as we know it, I came across this the other day and it shocked me how aggressively he is expecting AI to fundamentally transform our society and reduce the value of money to zero.

In six years he expects AI to be far far more intelligent than Humans in every aspect, and once connected to all key data sets ultimately making anything anyone is paid for that depends on their intelligence in almost any topic completely redundant. He also expects renewable energy programmes to result in free energy. This means the drivers of the economy as we know become totally redundant as money and energy will no longer have value and humans would only be required for manual tasks that Robots cant perform. Deflation would be epic in scale.

I work in Digital and have to say the AI solutions we are being shown now for release in the next two years are light years ahead of what were seeing today. Whilst six years feels too soon, I personally think who the president of the US is, is going to be the least of our worries.

 

[Milano]

The value of money will not hit zero. You will still need money to buy everything. There will still be a sliding scale of quality in every product and a comparible price tag.
The way people earn their money could change though. Traditional high paid sectors like law could be on shaky ground with AI.

Humankind will destroy itself eventually though, maybe this is another step on that journey.

 

[Brovion]

I'm a software developer and I certainly think AI will fundamentally alter my job. In the not-too-distant future the traditional software development team with a load of guys cutting code will go the way of the typing pool.

 

[hans kraay fan club]

If the value of currency is going to 'hit zero' then what would be the motivation for the developers of this all-powerful AI capability, to bother developing it

 

[KZNSeagull]

What's the point in making as much money as possible in 6 years if it's value will reach zero?

 

[The Clamp]

The human race really is determined to make itself extinct / obsolete.

 

[Mustafa II]

There are few jobs that can't be replaced by AI.

The rate that it develops is mind blowing. It's come a long way since it demonstrated how it could generate silly images and songs... and that was only just a year or two ago.

Corporations and businesses will start to take AI on to do human work en masse, where possible. They already are. It is simply cheaper, more reliable and better at its jobs that humans are. Few jobs are safe from this. The luddites were worried about mechanised knitting frames - regardless of what your industry is today, most jobs WILL be made extinct as AI will do it better.

It'll boil down to who's in charge of the world and how it adapts to there being fewer jobs for humans to do... it could either lead to some kind of utopia, where we don't really have to work much anymore... or perhaps a dystopia, where there aren't enough jobs to do, with human beings being a worthless nuisance resource to those running the world.

 

[Jackthelad]

We’ve been warned for decades and our governments have done nothing. I don’t like the guy but Yuval Harari paints a very bleak future and we are already steaming ahead. “ Technology risks dividing the world into wealthy elites and exploited “

 

[Zeus]

If the value of currency is going to 'hit zero' then what would be the motivation for the developers of this all-powerful AI capability, to bother developing it

At this point I think AI will pretty much be developing itself….

 

[Zeus]

What's the point in making as much money as possible in 6 years if its value will reach zero?

Because when the economic model is reset and everyone is essentially living off credits, the place you have levelled up to by that point will possibly set your position in society. I have to say it’s pretty depressing if true considering how much I’ve sunk into my pension .

 

[Titanic]

Boring.

 

[albionalba]

I agree regarding the breathless rate of change.
I thought this article was interesting about programming (hopefully the link won't hit a paywall) https://levelup.gitconnected.com/the-era-of-high-paying-tech-jobs-is-over-572e4e577758

I have no idea what the answer is - on the optimistic side imagine a meta AI management layer for the NHS that provided a live (transparent but anonymised) dashboard of admissions, GP consultations, outpatient appointments etc that found and modelled connections, capacities and savings areas / investment needs, trends and geo data etc with your journey through it managed by intelligent agents in touch regularly with patients etc. It's addressing these kind of big complex problems that AI could excel at - but ownership has to be public and not private / commercial. And imagine the squeals if any gov was courageous enough to risk developing it in terms of 'IT shambles / debacle / Horizon scandal' headlines.

For entertainment we are certainly close to having viable autonomous digital worlds with things like onchain games providing interoperability, composability, and creator economies. A few more tech leaps and they will be able to handle heftier interactions than presently. Some of these will displace incumbent walled-garden media platforms in the next decade.

 

[Badger]

I'm a software developer and I certainly think AI will fundamentally alter my job. In the not-too-distant future the traditional software development team with a load of guys cutting code will go the way of the typing pool.

I'm also a software developer and I can see AI having an impact on our industry but I don't think it will replace most of the actual development. I try and avoid using AI things but I have seen demonstrations on how it can be useful for writing tests and simple functions. It can't write complex systems with very specific and often changing requirements though. There is always going to be a need for developers to actually write code and manage the infrastructure and release processes.

Maybe development teams will get smaller and AI will be a useful tool to use alongside traditional coding. You'll probably spend a portion of your time setting up the parameters for the AI but that's not much different to what I do now with build servers etc.

Having said that, I find myself a lot less enthusiastic about the technology industry these days. All anyone talks about is AI. It's not the be-all and end-all of technology.

 

[dsr-burnley]

There are few jobs that can't be replaced by AI.

That's handy. I've been struggling to get a builder to come and fix my wall. Now I can get a computer to do it!

 

[mikeyjh]

I remember 6 or 7 years ago talking to financial analysts, managers, directors and more (at a 'local' multinational financial services company you may know) about how we could use moderate types of AI to streamline roles in their organisations. They almost universally were of the opinion that roles in their teams were beyond the realms of AI. Essentially, these team were looking for irregular financial transactions, something that one could design AI for in one's sleep but I think management accountant training inserts some sort of chip that makes they think that they are basically experts in everything.

I will never forget taking to one particular manager about the particular process and parameters she used to identify irregular transactions to which she replied (verbatim), 'gut feel, really'. Marvellous. Anyway, we shouldn't be afraid of AI but we should make it work for 'us'.

 

[hans kraay fan club]

At this point I think AI will pretty much be developing itself….

Is it going to come round to fix your burst pipe / loose roof tile / broken lock, too?

 

[albionalba]

s it going to come round to fix your burst pipe / loose roof tile / broken lock, too?

No but it will recognise your dwelling as being inefficient to the system and switch you off / charge you more etc

 

[Mustafa II]

Is it going to come round to fix your burst pipe / loose roof tile / broken lock, too?

That's handy. I've been struggling to get a builder to come and fix my wall. Now I can get a computer to do it!

AI powered robots will be doing these kinds of jobs sooner than you think...

 

[BNthree]

calling @Dr. No

 

[Wrong-Direction]

So before the bitter end tradesmen will be kings??