Comment by zackmorris

I believe that AGI is the last problem in computer science, so solving it solves all of the others. Then with AGI, we can solve the last remaining problems in physics (like unifying gravity with quantum mechanics), biology (administering gene therapy and curing death), etc.

But I do agree that innovations in tech are doing little or nothing to solve mass suffering. We had the tech to feed everyone in the world through farm automation by the 60s but chose not to. We had the tech in the 80s to do moonshots for AIDS, cancer, etc but chose not to. We had the tech in the 2000s to transition from fossil fuels to renewables but chose not to. Today we have the opportunity to promote world peace over continuous war but will choose not to.

It's to the point where I wonder how far innovations in tech and increases in economic productivity will get without helping people directly. My experience has been that the world chooses models like Dubai, Mexico City and San Francisco where skyscrapers tower over a surrounding homeless and indigent population. As long as we continue pursuing top-down leadership from governments and corporations, we'll see no change to the status quo, and even trends towards authoritarianism and fascism. It will take people at the bottom organizing to provide an alternate economic model before we have options like universal education/healthcare/opportunity and UBI from robot labor.

What gets me is that stuff like the ARC prize for AGI will "just work". As in, even if I had a modest stipend of a few thousand dollars per month to dabble in AI and come up with solutions the way I would for any other startup, certainly within 3 years, someone else would beat me to it. There simply isn't enough time now to beat the competition. Which is why I give AGI over 50% odds of arriving before 2030, where I used to think it was 2040 or 2050. The only thing that could stop it now is sabotage in the form of another global pandemic, economic depression or WWIII. Progress which threatens the power structures of the ultra wealthy is what drives the suffering that they allow to continue.