Comment by seydor
2 days ago
- If AI and robots are as good as Bill suggests , one can infer that AI will signal the end of cities, at least the end of megacities. If the home robot can clean and cook and also do my taxes, hair, and diagnose my health , one is more likely to escape unemployment by moving to a small town where he can find land and resources, and use robots to exploit them, just like humans have always done when economy was based in agriculture. If there is no longer a reason for people to live close together, decentralization is the most likely outcome.
- The biggest geopolitical impact will probably come from AI weapons. Just like previous shifts in weaponry caused the fall of empires , the rise of naval empires and the rise of national modern superpowers, AI may lead to the end of the UN and beginning of something new.
- Societies will change but a plan is not needed and it's most likely useless. Societies adapt , and nobody has ever been able to predict how. Let's not make the same mistake again.
I will believe that "AI will do all the work" when private prisons stop contracting inmates to do slave labor and employers stop hiring undocumented migrant workers.
> I will believe that "AI will do all the work" when private prisons stop contracting inmates to do slave labor and employers stop hiring undocumented migrant workers.
The majority of the slave labor in prisons in the US make from nothing at all to 50 cents per hour.
The powers that be will still shamefully be exploiting that labor source long after AI/robots are capable of cheaply doing that work.
Interesting bar.
Interesting way to say "never".
> If there is no longer a reason for people to live close together, decentralization is the most likely outcome.
Many people like living next to other people purely for social reasons.
why do you think a bot can't replace that, either?
given all of the issues with people getting attached to their online girlfriend -- it's already happening
Because the social issues happen at a more biological level, hormones and cell signaling and stuff. Robots are at a much higher level. Online girlfriends are cool, but as we all know, not a replacement for physical touch, intimacy, and relationship building. Your body doesn’t release oxytocin from cuddling with your cold computer.
Maybe we can eventually “trick” the human brain, but I think it will be much more challenging than people think. I would imagine if people even just knew someone was a robot, the jig is up. For most people. It wouldn’t be enough to create the perfect humanoid robot. We’d also have to make them hidden in plain sight. Full Ex Machina style.
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I don't think so. At the first chance during COVID people started moving out of big cities. Most people don't need the city, they need a village. We are in cities due to jobs requiring us to be in big cities.
People moved out of the cities during COVID because close physical proximity to large numbers of strangers was a potentially deadly hazard to their health.
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Yes. Maybe we're going back to the old ways of life and social structures, but now with robots to help. Who needs states and cities when you can have everything you need without them?
Absolutely right about war and technology too. Also right about plans being mostly useless.
Amazing analysis, thanks for this comment!
You'd better hope Bill Gates stops buying up all the farmland then.
He's running out of time, he better step it up. He's only at 0.03%.
People enjoy living in cities, at least some of us do. Personally the thought of everyone living on their own personal homestead manned by robots sounds really boring and lonely?
"If there is no longer a reason for people to live close together, decentralization is the most likely outcome."
Umm what? Humans are social animals and many people LIKE living in cities in close proximity to other people and close to amenities. I do not see a future where we decentralize and spread out because of AI.
We have also seen this play out with WFH/Covid. The recall into centralized structures, regardless of the technology available to mitigate the need, was fast and broadly applied.
Our current social structure is actively resistant to decentralization and I don't see that changing unless there is some forcing function to break that hold and keep it broken for new norms to settle into expectations.
0% chance you're getting a plot of land and happily ever after in the world as described.
Humans like cities.
It brings people together for mating.
It wasn't only industrialization.
Even today, before AI, once you find a mate, THEN, you move to the suburbs.
It wasn't even industrialisation - it was agriculture. Do people really like cities? I am not so sure - certainly many do, but many also hanker for the village and there are a bunch of interesting theories about us working well at 'village scale' (I could be easily convinced that no-one hankers for the suburbs..) I think if the economic opportunities were not so heavily weighted towards cities we would see much reduced urbanisation.
"do people really like cities? I am not so sure"
Just look at real estate prices in New York, SF, Boston, etc. Yes, people REALLY like cities. Even the wealthiest people who can afford anything still choose cities
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They're also much cheaper from an infrastructure perspective to maintain
Life in the city is more expensive, in my experience though. Richer, with vastly more options, sure - but more expensive overall.
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That's a pretty unhinged idea you've presented; feels completely autobiographical.
People move out to the suburbs after they're married with kids? How is that unhinged?
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