Comment by bykhun
2 years ago
> I'd also argue that the biggest threat from ASI is what I've heard Roman Yampolskiy label as "ikigai-doom"; that AI could become so much better than humans at all the things humans do, that even in the best case humanity is left with no purpose
I bet status games will stay. Robots may be sexual partners, CEOs and therapists, but they'd never take on status roles in our society – only utility roles.
Same as we do Olympics, even though machines are much better at throwing and lifting than us – we do it to win approval of others
Effectively what you've just said is: You can still do all these pursuits, as long as you're literally the best in the world. That's not really helpful; that's still ikigai-doom.
The point is: If your passion is animation, you can probably find work doing that today. It might suck, certainly more than in times past, and its hard, and that's an intrinsic part of passion. When AI can do that, maybe the best animators in the world will still find work at some bespoke studio making "the authentic hand-made stuff", like a farmers market, but AI may make everything else. And it may be, not just because AI could produce it "better" (it may or may not), but definitely because AI will produce it cheaper. Capitalism doesn't generally care about quality.
And the same goes for many careers: the ironic thing is that AI probably won't come for the plumbers and janitors very quickly, and there seems to be some kind of weird correlation between the jobs people find high passion in, and the jobs AI is likely to replace. In effect, we're evolving into a world where humans are relegated to manual labor, while AI handles everything else, poorly, but humans can't actually make a living doing that other stuff because AI does it so much cheaper and good enough.
But sure; there will still be millionaire status celebs.