How will AI change the world?

How will AI change the world? Post by TED-Ed directed by Christoph Sarow raises an issue which will change humans interface with its environment to the possible point of extinction but no one yet is game enough to connect all the dots. The promo ticks all the questions - "In the coming years, artificial intelligence is probably going to change your life— and likely the entire world. But people have a hard time agreeing on exactly how AI will affect our society. Can we build AI systems that help us fix the world? Or are we doomed to a robotic takeover? Explore the limitations of artificial intelligence and the possibility of creating human-compatible technology" but questions do little unless connected to answers.

Reality is that there is Truth, Assumption and Logic. Truth can be attested to through Science, Assumptions can assume there must be a God out there somewhere and Logic can derive a probability. The problem is that fames Professor Yuval Harari has postulated that we are heading for a "Useless class" of people which he supports as truth but isn't game enough to assume what will happen to them. Logic then follows how we have learned lemmings do not go crazy and commit suicide by jumping off cliff except perhaps in Disney movies, they fall off when there are too many of them. To not have so many as to fall off, humans now with 8 billion of us heading for 9 billion will need some major adjustments in the future to survive.

In my Urban Development 2120 [Business Expert Press USA] published just before Covid hit, started along these lines describing how habitats and styles of living would change but then the pandemic and government reaction to it have simply accelerated the process. The effect of locking people up at home, away from school and work will have a lasting effect as people had to adapt to a new environment. People found that working from home they could mix this in with other activities and sleep in an hour longer not having to transport to an office or take a half day off whenever they felt like it and no one would know. From personal experience with a son whose every spare moment had been devoted to friends and sport now changes to non stop gaming with a different group of friends from his bed room while most of my daughter's regular sleepovers have evaporated as she spends 20 hours a day on her many devices. And forget the fact that we have a large garden when it is hard to get them out of their rooms even now the pandemic and lockdowns are over. While in business I might have benefited by being able to run three jobs in three time zones online, the negative effect the lockdowns had on the family long term would not be worth it.

So can we get back to "creating human-compatible technology" out of where we have arrived? Getting back then to following "Logic", wishing it is unlikely to happen when you need to ask your 19 year old how to handle some new adaption on your computer and business meetings follow preprogrammed formats run by the youth of the day. Even with 18 to 28 year olds in the family, they get their news off their phones where it is learned daily these are now AI controlled. No one reads beyond a second paragraph while dozens of posts criticise a Netflix doco attacking Megan while admitting they hadn't actually see the show.

Which gets back to that elephant in the room where Professor Harari postulated that the older generation will not be able to reinvent itself into handling AI leaving open the question of what is to become of them. In my Universal Basic Income and the Threat to Democracy as we know it [Business Expert Press USA] I pose this as one solution [the Swiss rejected UBI] but the question becomes whether the AI workers or owners of capital will ultimately accept such a subsidising arrangement remembering how in China collective farmers would not work hard on a plot while others slacked off. So back to the reality no one will address even though it poked its nose through during the pandemic: let the old and infirm pass along, boost assisted dying options and in some countries simply execute people who protest against governments. All of these are highly unpleasant topics to address yet suggested to be crucial at a time where as I write in my Climate Change the New Religion, Climate Change has become a major distraction not helping save the planet but ensuring the poor will ultimately be unable to survive amongst those who can afford the eventually higher prices to then join the lemmings to fall off the cliff...