US experts who work in artificial intelligence fields seem to have a much rosier outlook on AI than the rest of us.
In a survey comparing views of a nationally representative sample (5,410) of the general public to a sample of 1,013 AI experts, the Pew Research Center found that “experts are far more positive and enthusiastic about AI than the public” and “far more likely than Americans overall to believe AI will have a very or somewhat positive impact on the United States over the next 20 years” (56 percent vs. 17 percent). And perhaps most glaringly, 76 percent of experts believe these technologies will benefit them personally rather than harm them (15 percent).
The public does not share this confidence. Only about 11 percent of the public says that “they are more excited than concerned about the increased use of AI in daily life.” They’re much more likely (51 percent) to say they’re more concerned than excited, whereas only 15 percent of experts shared that pessimism. Unlike the majority of experts, just 24 percent of the public thinks AI will be good for them, whereas nearly half the public anticipates they will be personally harmed by AI.
Depends on what we mean by “AI”.
Machine learning? It’s already had a huge effect, drug discovery alone is transformative.
LLMs and the like? Yeah I’m not sure how positive these are. I don’t think they’ve actually been all that impactful so far.
Once we have true machine intelligence, then we have the potential for great improvements in daily life and society, but that entirely depends on how it will be used.
It could be a bridge to post-scarcity, but under capitalism it’s much more likely it will erode the working class further and exacerbate inequality.
Machine learning is just large automated optimization, something that was done for many decades before, but the hardware finally reached a power-point where the automated searches started out-performing more informed selective searches.
The same way that AlphaZero got better at chess than Deep Blue - it just steam-rollered the problem with raw power.
As long as open source AI keeps up (it has so far) it’ll enable technocommunism as much as it enables rampant capitalism.
I considered this, and I think it depends mostly on ownership and means of production.
Even in the scenario where everyone has access to superhuman models, that would still lead to labor being devalued. When combined with robotics and other forms of automation, the capitalist class will no longer need workers, and large parts of the economy would disappear. That would create a two tiered society, where those with resources become incredibly wealthy and powerful, and those without have no ability to do much of anything, and would likely revert to an agricultural society (assuming access to land), or just propped up with something like UBI.
Basically, I don’t see how it would lead to any form of communism on its own. It would still require a revolution. That being said, I do think AGI could absolutely be a pillar of a post capitalist utopia, I just don’t think it will do much to get us there.
I would like to believe that we could have a gradual transition without the revolution being needed, but… present political developments make revolution seem more likely.
That depends entirely on how much UBI is provided.
I envision a “simple” taxation system with UBI + flat tax. You adjust the flat tax high enough to get the government services you need (infrastructure like roads, education, police/military, and UBI), and you adjust the UBI up enough to keep the wealthy from running away with the show.
Marshall Brain envisioned an “open source” based property system that’s not far off from UBI: https://marshallbrain.com/manna
It will only help us get there in the hands of individuals and collectives. It will not get us there, and will be used to the opposite effect, in the hands of the 1%.