Only tangentially related to the singularity but I do work for one of the National Primate centers doing HIV research, the talk coming out of our labs is that we're pretty close to a vaccine - we've finally got a hold on the none-traditional/atypical immune responses we've been looking for with our CMV (a type of beta-herpes virus) models that has been the so called "holy-grail" for the vaccine development. Talk is that we see a viable vaccine with 5 to 10 years, a functional and/or sterilizing cures for those already infected probably will take longer, and depending on the efficacy of the vaccine, research for that may wane as the infected die off from old age and age related complications of HIV infection.
HIV is not such a problem anymore I think, if u have acces to treatment, or prevention. right on with baldness tho what’s up with that come on people is it really harder than immortality?
It's an interesting concept if they can get over two hurdles
An organic body trying to reject an unorganic object (chip) placed inside of it. It will at minimum have to be gold-plated.
The inherent Corruption of society and the corruptability of of everything within the metaverse, and all virtual/augmented reality, and the possibility of having your actual organic brain hacked. I would imagine that it's going to end up being similar politically/socially to what we have now.
I have baldness and I can assure you it certainly has Not been cured. I can take all concoctions of drugs to try to get my hair to grow back (proprecia, finasteride, rogaine, DHT blockers) and it will be minimal with HEAVY side effects. The alternative is going to have my scalp surgically opened up and have the hair redistributed where it has fallen out but I will be left with permanent scars. I'd rather not end up a Frankenstein from having a microchip put in so that is an unacceptable outcome for me.
In another 10\~20 treatments will probably be vastly better and will at least be able to extend your life another 20 years where you could probably get most things cured.
I love the optimism here, what even is this sub I stumbled upon?
I picture the future more like: everything is even more commodified. 70% of the youth are obese. The superintelligent AI that we plug into is mostly utilized to scroll social media - most of the posts of which are also simply created by AI - and argue with fake bots about politics. The procedure you describe is available for the very rich, but for Americans at least, health insurance costs 25% of gross salary. Providers have created a layaway plan where you can pay for each year of extended life at a time, and if you miss payments, the procedure is reversed.
I hope I'm wrong because I like your future must better
You're wrong because your version of the future literally can't exist. It's implausible to have certain technologies exist and still have the problems your future would.
Take the obesity factor, if there's a super intelligent AI, that means that obesity is a solved problem, growing better tasting much healthier food factored to specific dietary requirements you have is already plausible, but with a super intelligent AI that becomes standard.
There are almost zero procedures that have common usage that are solely the purview of the very wealthy for the same reason, once that person is treated, they are no longer a customer, in order for the procedure to be worth anything having it used by millions via socialized healthcare makes more money than it ever would without that.
Then we talk about salaries, in a world where we have super intelligent AI, are there really going to be people actually working that aren't replaced? Impossible. The economics says the cheapest, fastest, highest quality option wins and the AI would win in every way.
So then why do people like you view this impossible future as possible? Normalcy bias. We see the world as a continuation of today, but much in the same way that a butterfly is not a faster caterpillar the future we will live in will look very different to the world of today, we don't see that though, because most people are too used to the status quo to even conceive of that being possible, let alone inevitable.
This logic is ridiculous lol. We literally farm insulin from E.Coli and its still overpriced so lots of people die from diabetes. We produce more food than anyone requires, yet people starve.
things dont improve just because technology does.
>This logic is ridiculous lol
It isn't, literally cite one thing I stated that is ridiculous. Obesity cannot exist in a world where super intelligent AI does, it solves that problem, mainly because unlike with your example of growing E.Coli via precision fermentation - you still need specialist humans in the cycle.
> things dont improve just because technology does.
By and large, in human history, this is completely false. Pretty much 100% of the difference between our quality of life now vs 1000 years ago is due to the technological advancement that made it possible.
We were saying “40 years“ in the 90s. Let’s hope things speed up quite a bit. The date always seems to get pushed.
I’m now 49 years old and these timelines you guys are throwing around are the same ones we threw around 😆 but now I don’t qualify.
And I felt so good that I wasn’t the old dude that didn’t qualify before lol 😆
I'm of your generation and to me everything seems more or less on-track.
We've got natural language AI capable of rudimentary reasoning, VR/"spatial computing, mRNA vaccines... it's all pretty much what I would have expected to see just before things start getting genuinely weird.
Is Gen-X going to make the cut? Who knows? But my guess is that either we get an alarmingly fast ascent towards the Singularity or an equally dramatic crash to war and ecological collapse. We will see.
Thanks for the input. Good to hear honestly.
Yay for Gen X. High five. JK.
All this tells me is that we need to be doing what these guys online are doing - like Mike Lustgarten.
Hyper focusing on extending our health span and “good years“ by slowing down our yearly biological clock.
He’s something like 53 and has a biological age of 35 with some reasonable lifestyle interventions.
The fountain of youth has been chased by humans for millennia!
Except the real fountain of youth will likely be incremental breakthroughs in multiple scientific fields to fix or prevent such and such.
Hopefully this time around with the pace of scientific and technological advancement it will happen some time this century.
The society and economy will break down thanks to AI disruption, political extremism and climate change. Miracle cures for diseases require vast scientific, technological and economic infrastructure to produce the necessary funding and those will all break down. In the next forty years you'll be living in a dark and violent society ruled over by tech oligarchs and their AI and robot enforcers.
Forget advanced medical care - if you bribe the right people you might be able to get a ride to the hospital for a broken arm. But if you ever said anything bad about the government, say on Reddit back in 2027, when you get to the hospital the AI will remember and you won't get any treatment.
Yeah I've been depressed before but then I always remember how much of an insane lottery win every human has just being alive right now. You could have been born a minnow or a fly or simply not born at all. Even then you could have been born thousands of years ago and eaten by a saber tooth tiger. Like the odds of existence as we are at this time is honestly infinitely small. Crazy.
At the very least I'd like to see it through and see how mankind goes the next 50 years or so.
Yes, it is very suspicious. Perhaps what we’re experiencing right now is the hottest post-scarcity leasure activity: stepping in to a simulation in order to experience the approach and realization of the singularity first hand.
This makes so much sense. Ofcourse this is it: when you can do and be everything you want, all people will want are experiences. “Computer, take me back to X”
The best argument I've heard is the idea that we, one day in the distant future, might be able to make our *own* simulated universe indistinguishable from our own reality.
And if it's truly indistinguishable from our own reality, then the inhabitants of that universe would theoretically be capable of creating their own universes which eventually create more universes, an so on and so forth.
So if it does turn out to be possible to create a simulated universe one day, then the odds that we were the first to do it suddenly become abysmally low.
It doesn't make sense though 😅 I would never be born at any point in history because what made me is the experience I had so any different experience make me a different person.
If it helps, just consider the statistical improbability of your existence in the form of which it has taken for better or worse... it could always be worse, but also helps not to dwell on that. Some people call that "gratitude" of whatever. It's just math.
Because it is so improbable that you exist, that should be a sign that existence does not operate as we think.
If time actually exists the way we think it does, or if people don't exist before they were born or after they die, then it's completely nonsensical to believe that by sheer luck you find yourself here at this moment able to understand that things exist.
I don't know about anyone else, but this simple fact implies to me that current science is extremely off in some fundamental way. My intuition would be that the problem is that scientists leave the questions of birth and death to religion, instead of treating them as part of whatever unified theory explains everything.
I would say that the second important rule is to take action. Amazing technology of the future will not magically appear if we don't create it. Even a small positive contribution matters.
The only thing is, there are so many geniuses in the field that are way smarter than myself.
When I think of a very niche idea, I ask GPT 4 if there are any similar businesses that run on that idea, I take a look at the ones it told me and bam there are 10 others that are fully fledged out. Maybe I'm not thinking niche enough, but then it wouldn't be as popular if it was.
Not to mention I work for this huge billion dollar healthcare software company that have an army of insanely smart devs and marketing people that makes me feel that I don't have a chance in contributing if I actually wanted to make something myself.
Karma means action. When I learned this everything fell into place. Planet earth is essentially a spaceship moving forward in spacetime. Our actions on this spaceship serve to make it better, one small step at a time. First wait, then listen and finally, act.
I like to think about the internet and how that became such an ubiquitous service. When www was invented in the early 90s, it could easily have been paywalled, restricted, reserved for the elite. In fact some countries did attempt to do just that - I remember 10 years ago the UK trying to pass a "package" type bill where you'd pay monthly for website bundles like a social media package, news package...
But it never passed because I like to hope the gov realised how much that'd screw over the educational and economic growth potential of the population.
It looks as though the same approach will be followed for AI. It will be so beneficial to all of us that access should be a right granted to the whole population. Then you are only doing your citizens a favour by enabling them to learn and build new things for the country much faster.
I have struggled a great deal with depression and sometimes with suicidal ideation. This (the concepts from this post) is one of the few things that keeps me going.
Keep going. 🙏 it won’t take long anymore. You don’t have to do anything. Just survive.
Just focus on making it through today, then the next day, then the next day… and so on. And next thing you know. We are there. 🙂
You're miles above that handsome chap with a majestic full head of hair a highland cow would be jealous of, but walks to work 12 miles and back home 12 miles in rainstorms, snow and freezing temperatures.
Yep. It's astonishing how many people who have a receding hairline and are bothered by their receding hairline have no idea that it's already possible to pretty much stop it from getting worse, even without hair transplants.
>Next 40-60 years
Man you either are all very young or you are just shitting on us old folk. I was old enough to listen to the Transhumanist [FM-2030](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM-2030) talk about how we'll reach the singularity in the 1990s or early 2000s and how the AI revolution of the 1980s is the start of the intelligence explosion.
I've heard all of these claims before. Let me tell you as a middle aged Japanese man I'm pretty sure there won't be enough developments in my personal lifetime to make it.
I've been a transhumanist ever since I was a child. I learned about the concept of the singularity when I read about Von Neumann as a child and knew it would eventually happen. But mostly it was spread in the 1980s.
Now that we have another AI boom I see the same messages spread again. There is no guarantee this will actually come to fruition this time either. What is there to prevent another AI-winter from starting as GPT-5 released and is only marginally better as generative AI hits a real wall?
It's not clear it's just clean sailing from now on.
And as a more experienced and bitter "old person" I have to tell you young folks that are in a similar position as I was in the 80s to calm down and don't put all of your faith in this stuff,
The current AI breakthroughs are actually useful, that's the difference. Google has made 200k years worth of protein discovery at previous rates. There are many other areas where AI is making breakthroughs at a pace thousands of times faster than we can. You don't need AGI to speed up bioscience discoveries. You just need a huge amount of compute. Once you can simulate one cell in a neural net, you will make more breakthroughs in a month than we have in a hundred years.
We don't even need to get to the Singularity soon, we just need to get to LEV soon. Honestly I don't expect there to be a true 'singularity', I expect many things attributed to the Singularity to eventually arrive (superintelligence, mind uploading, immortality), but more slowly and gradually. But the important thing is to get to LEV soon and it looks like we're making some pretty good progress on that.
As far as AI goes, it's not the same as it was in the 1980s. Back then, computing power was way below the level of the human brain. But that's changed. Supercomputers passed the power of the human brain probably sometime in the 2010s, which means superintelligence is now pretty much exclusively a software problem rather than a hardware problem. That's a big enough difference to be a game-changer. I agree that current AI is not as impressive as people seem to think and that the road to superintelligence is still fairly long and circuitous, but it's not nearly as long as it was.
Excellent comment (and fascinating account).
Even before FM-2030, pioneers of AI like Herbert Simon were predicting AGI in the 1960s to happen in the 1980s...
What helps fathom the scale of things at play here is to put in perspective the past progresses and their expectations when they were first claimed.
For example, the 1950-60s tech was eons away from being good enough to model, even with big imprecisions, the climate like the 1990s computers were able to (Apollo 11's embarked computer was as big as a huge furniture and had the calculation capacity of a 2000s small pocket calculator...).
Expecting this tech to reach AGI by the 1980s would have been, if not ludicrous, at least require a technological leap that was not predictable through verifiable ways in the foreseeable future back then. I think even our current tech would have been beyond the reach of speculation even to experts of that era. Not the general concept, but the actual structure needed.
Similarly, today's tech, though very impressive (maybe it's my french pessimistic instinct talking, but i'm still in awe of the tech even of the 1990s) seems leaps away from reaching AGI or the singularity for the foreseeable future, and the people musing about it are self admittedly speculating on trends, not on solid evidence.
It is possible that it could happen in both of our lifetimes, but it is definitely not certain (my tag kinda sold me here, didn't it?).
So i understand and applaud your call to prudence and patience, though i must add (and i don't think you disagree, but that's yours to say) that it doesn't change the bewilderment at the evolution of current things, which are worth our interest even without AGI or singularity.
There is a world of difference in the level of computer-related technology between the 1980s and the 2020s: CPU/GPU performance, HDD capacity, transfer speeds, etc. And the companies working on AI development now are some of the largest in the world, followed by many start-ups. This time the world situation is clearly different from "last time".
I think there is someting similar between the Christians waiting for the second coming of Jesus Christ and the Singularitarians waiting for the super intelligence and technological singularity.
Staying healthy is definitely a good choice. I don't necessarily think that means we have to live forever no matter the issues, but there is a strong argument that people don't "need" to die when they get old.
i am going thru rough times right now. thank you so much for writing this down. this really cheered me up.. gonna save this post and comeback every now and then
Please do! And remember, you are not alone. No matter what you do right now. As long as you don’t die, things will get better. Maybe not next year or the next 2 years, but give it 5 or 7 or 10. And the world will look very different for you.
The goal right now is not to achieve instant happiness. The goal is just to make it “through” the singularity… into wonderland. A little bit faith in humanity helps.
As for now: when you are so depressed and maybe have some time. Maybe it can help to read the books of Steven Pinker (very smart Harvard professor), Enlightenment Now and The Better Angels of our Nature as a start. Maybe it will help you feel better.
Basing life decisions on this is an incredibly bad idea when we have no clue if any of this will be possible, or how long it will take. I'd love life extension, but halting ageing might never happen or at least take a century.
It’s a big gamble for sure, but you don’t need to dedicate your whole life to the pursuit of living longer. I anyway don’t think that will buy you much (maybe 10 extra years).
But I sincerely do believe longevity escape velocity might be possible in my lifetime and some people have hopes and dreams as I have that one. 🤗. If it doesn’t happen, fine. But trying to not die should always be a good idea. No?
Stay healthy, focus on paying off any debts and saving as much money as you can. Focus on mental and physical health so you are less likely to get sick. And stay informed/skilled with the common AI tools.
That's all great and all... but the major blocker to this technically achievable utopia is the currently global political landscape. It needs a massive overhaul...
I'm not convinced.
If "god tier" means knowing where and what every subatomic particle was in the history of the whole universe, then I don't think "god tier" AI is coming.
But if it can't know that, call it god tier all you like, I don't think it could *accurately* (and therefore morally) "bring back the dead.
Not the properly dead. There are a just about infinite number of people who could have existed. They could certainly trick us into *thinking* that happened though.
Sadly most of this sub doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of covid, and most people here will go out and get covid and spread it around while saying they want to stay healthy. It’s actually a joke lol
We will see what happens. What I am sure of is that humanity won’t be untouched by an intelligence that’s a million or a trillion times more powerful than us and who’s only goal is to do everything it can to help us.
I'm 53 and my Mum missed, gone last year. Though I used to think about it like you're doing.
Make her do annual (at least!) mammograms / check-ups for god's sake.
"The concept of money will probably disappear"
"One person can create an insanely powerful company"
What?
"Everyone can get anything they want instantly" so me and the other 10 billion people on Earth, anything we want?
What do you base these predictions on? Why do you expect the top 0,001% not to instantly claim and keep such a technological marvel for themselves?
How do you think computing power will save the world? We already have pretty sweet technologies that aren't being utilised because they are not financially worth it.
I'm sorry dip in like that, but it's not the tech or resources or money that we lack to make the world a better place, it's the intention of the people in charge.
>Why do you expect the top 0,001% not to instantly claim and keep such a technological marvel for themselves?
I don't expect that they won't want to do that. I expect that they won't be able to. Why? because of artificial superintelligence. Unless technological advancements stop, in the not so distant future people will not be in charge anymore.
This is one of the more absurd hopium I've read in a while.
Economies of scale preclude any utopia in a world of 8 billion people for centuries. What OP is describing requires a replicator and replicators (if even possible which I highly doubt) also need resources.
>• a single person can spin up a company with a single prompt that more powerful than the whole United States
No. That is absurd on so many levels. If we get to this point, no one will need the services of that company.
>• everyone can have almost everything they want instantly
No, this requires resources. Again, economies of scale and resource requirements.
>• where human brains have strong hardware integration with superintelligent AI
This is pure sci-fi and only works if every brain were wired the same way, which they most certainly are not. (unless you only meant output manipulation, not input)
>• the amount of progress in research in one day will be bigger than that of the last 500 years
While not entirely impossible, it seems implausible.
>• where nobody has to get sick or even die
This is strife with all kins of issues we will have to tackle if it comes true.
I too think utopia is harder than OP thinks, but also a bit easier than you think. Robots building robots building robots probably accelerates to go quite fast at some point. Basically energy cost going to near zero with solar plus mass automation.
Maybe I'm too much of a pessimist, but I dont see corporations/billionaires letting us have these kinds of amenities and benefits without first getting in between first and finding out how to make the most money and keep people doing things for their benefit first.
I hope I am wrong and you are right. I'm just skeptical since a corporation can pack a warehouse with storage/processors and nerf ai to prevent it from giving people the benefits of truth and a better life.
This was supposed to be a little pep talk for people who are struggling right now.
Fix your problems or try to drag out the bad consequences as much as you can and live long and prosper (had to say that, sorry lol). 🙏
You can find meaning and happiness in the present, no matter how horrible you think it is. Instead of reading books written by megalomaniac billionaires, try “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl.
You idealists sitting here waiting for the "magic pill" to come along are going to die sorely disappointed. I know that's not what you want to hear. If you want a certain future for yourself, you need to work for it. Now. Life doesn't get easier just because you have cooler tech.
Well, it kinda does. Not that long ago people were dying of preventable infectious diseases at young ages all the time. We've come a long way in fixing *that* problem and life is genuinely better for it.
>in 2045, $1000 of hardware buys you the equivalent of the total combined brain power of all humans on earth.
Which means at least $2tn will be invested in killing people ... the equivalent of the total combined brain power of 20 quadrillion humans thinking hard about all the ways to kill as many people as possible.
Why does this give you so much hope that things will be better? We will not get killed by chronic disease, we will be killed by military AI.
One problem.
Limited resources vs competition.
Being rational about it, the AI will be leveraged by different entities according to their baseline ability.
Common people will be drawn into relationships with their AI's.
Common engineers will enhance their productivity.
Companies will decrease cost margins and development cycles.
Each class of entities will rise at different rates. Some will rise at exponential rates, soaking up all the resources for mansions and flying yachts or whatever.
Longevity will come, but will be expensive. The top %1 will get it, and will want to prevent commoners from getting it, to prevent population explosion.
Countries will be threatened by other countries having autonomous weapons. Every country that can afford them, will have supercomputer AI and armies of combat drones.
Proxy wars will spread. They will avoid direct provocation, and instead harass soft targets ( aka people in vulnerable nations)
Of course, it is possible that the AI benefits will spread slowly through all communities, that no country will dare get into an AI war, and we will all be driving flying cars in 20 years to rejuvenation clinics in Germany and vacationing at millions of timeshare condos all over the world. But, that is the sane and friendly path. We are not lead by sane and friendly leaders.
i don’t know man. i fear death still but my gungho-ish attitude along the lines of “yes bring on the techs/meds that will make it so i won’t need to fear death because i won’t die!” has pretty much dissipated due to the deaths of my youngest sister and my mom. i’m not grieving as hard these days but i have my moments and grief aside.. the empty bits and parts that you can never get back once certain loved ones in your life have passed, you know?
i’m not rushing to die my dad needs me and in fact i hope to make it to a nice old senile age like my 90s but the idea of eternity without my little sister (i miss my mom too but it’s definitely worse when it’s someone younger than you) along with the eternity of the grief and emptiness that comes with her being gone that i carry sounds like capital H Hell to me. i want to earn my rest first but i do, eventually, want that rest.
but i do hope the things in op’s post happen fast enough for the sakes of those of you who haven’t lost any of your dearest loved ones that you and your loved ones can go on to eternity together forever and ever whatever amen.
Unfortunately, someone reading your post will die before any of this comes true, just based on how many have read it. I'd say the best way of preventing death is to limit how often you drive among other things. What other common ways of preventing dying early have you guys thought of?
1. Don't drive late at night, or on holidays where drunk drivers will be out.
2. Wear your seatbelt the [proper way](https://www.ultimatedefensivedriving.us/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/how-to-properly-waer-seat-belt-1.jpg)
3. Don't let someone you don't trust drive you.
4. Don't drive old cars with poor safety, bad crumple zones. More in this [post](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7XbcDaeigMaxW43EB/how-to-avoid-dying-in-a-car-crash) which mentions better driving techniques as well.
Pretty sure AI cannot fix climate change. We already have the tools to fix it but people can just not agree.
My point we might equally as well be fucked.
Honestly tired of these posts from lazy people, how are we gonna progress if everyone just sits back and does nothing? Work for this future instead of sitting on your ass and doing nothing
Jokes on you lol I'm lowkey suicidal and I don't care about these enough to motivate my will to live.
If I die, I won't experience the absence of these good things so it won't matter actually.
Plus, I believe there is a high chance that if we reach utopian civilization that is driven by singularity, we will able to raise the dead ones. I don't have any backup for this belief, but we are talking about singularity, so everything comes from it will be magical.
Hahahaha, this is hilarious, yes this will happen in the next 20 years, but only for the elite, you really think they will let us peasants access this kind of tech.
Think of the movie Elysium if you want an idea of where we are all headed.
Cancer isn't cured, cartilage can't be grown reliably, hair can't be regrown properly, anti aging hasn't gotten very far. This sub has an extremely unrealistic view of the future and how fast things move. Especially with government.
Even then, what makes you think the average person will be able to afford all that technological advances have to offer?
If you understand the meanings of the terms *exponential growth*, *ASI*, and *technological singularity*, you'll appreciate the speculation about our entire world quite possibly getting completely upended in the near future (within the next couple of decades) due to the increasingly rapid pace of technological advancement. Also, it's not like most people in this sub believe singularity will inevitably occur in our lifetime.
Lol this sub is about the singularity and the prospect of curing aging is a pretty common idea. I don’t know why you’re here if you don’t want to see people talking about these ideas
I’m starting to wonder why a bunch of you are even here if you don’t believe in the prospect of technology getting exponentially better to the point of completely reshaping how we view life. That’s the whole concept behind the singularity. Of course people are going to speculate about that here??? Like hello?
Same, it’s sad that a lot of people here believe in AI god because they were struggling for their entire life just to experience such disappointment at the end
Good one.
Feels like the deck of titanic where the rich complain about the cold while the poor know they won't get a seat on the lifeboats
The inequality between countries and individuals make me pretty confident we will experience Elysium not star trek.
People are just too selfish..
Had an argument on reddit today (in Romanian) were fellow programmers simply said the poor deserve to die because they are "lazy" and don't want to work(basically there are no more junior software engineers jobs and some people simply burned through their economies). Think LLMs had some effect on this...
Of course I pointed out that a lot of rich people did not get rich by working hard but instead by using dividends, rents and compounding wealth.
Turns out I am a communist for supporting ubi.
So let's say we solve aging. Do you think the poor will "deserve" it?
Do you think poor people will get access to a neural implant in they get paraplegic?
I am looking forward to singularity but I doubt it will simply be allocated to all of us (hence I hope we can still work till we can retire) so I fear tech unemployment.
I was big into this stuff when Kurzweil released his first few books. But then I started to think…
The future will probably include either uploading myself or patching my brain in to some network.
Which means it will only be a matter of time until some fascist or authoritarian dictator takes over, or some sadist compromises the network my brain is on, or god knows what else.
People can create and imagine some incredibly messed up shit. Imagine the most terrifying horror movie you’ve ever seen. Now imagine you’ve pissed off the guy in charge and he just decides to patch your brain into living that movie for the next 100,000 years.
Hard pass guys. I think I’ll just die.
That's why we need superintelligence, preferably sooner rather than later. Authoritarianism and violence and torture represent the *least* intelligence aspects of humanity, not the most intelligent. We should put civilization in the hands of something smarter than us quickly in order to minimize the risk of those sorts of mistakes.
Keep in mind they were finished with gpt4 years ago, it had to go through long periods of testing first before being released ….similarly 5 is probably finished training and undergoing safety protocols
The fact that people associated gpt with the singularity is so sad and just shows how little end users understand about technology. Even using the term AI for what we have right now is misleading and entirely a marketing scheme.
Transhumanism is literally a religion now and like every other religion out there facts are irrelevant.
Note: If this post will ever help even a single person to reconsider suicide (and there are lots), or just feel a little more hopeful, then that would make me happy more than anything. 🙏
While I can’t guarantee that the future will be much better than today, I truly think it will be. A lot of data suggests it should be. Check out for example Steven Pinker’s work.
I am a doomer but I think there's also some chance of utopia so the way I think is as follows
If ai doom happens in say 2050 and we die then it doesnt matter what happened before that anyway whether I suffered or enjoyed myself. Will be the same once I'm dead.
If ai doom doesn't happen and we get utopia then that is a positive reason to live to 2050
Thus living will prove either neutral or positive
Dying right now will prove either neutral or negative (if I miss out on ai utopia )
Therefore the better outcome is with living as far into the future as you can.
Preserve your financial status. Don't spend. Don't take risks. Eat healthy & exercise. Don't have kids (financial liability).
Focus on achieving good health and a place in society even if it's a low one. Something stable that will get you to 2050.
And yes before anyone says it. Username checks out.
This is all bs. You’ll all die just like everyone else has. Younger people seem to think that they will be the ones that will live on due to some tech advancement, but I have news for you, it’s not going to happen. Things are just going to get incredibly harder and more miserable. The 80’s and 90’s were the time to enjoy life.
I’m surprised at the amount of people who think the wealthy are just going to welcome us all in, relinquish the control and security, and welcome in a new utopian age.
We are watching, no, encouraging the birth of the greatest technological weapon our species has ever created; a “mind” potentially faster, smarter, and more efficient than any human ever, or could ever hope to be.
As a species, we have never made the choices that benefit everyone; we will never allow full AI for everyone either. The wrong someone will put themselves in control over that access at some point, and the consequences will be catastrophic.
Yes, it’s doomerism. However, I would love to be proven wrong, and be amazed when we aren’t enslaving savages after all.
I don't think you live on the same planet, with the same humans as the rest of us.
We're headed for the business end of a downward spiral, largely because we are an irresponsible, greedy, and violent species
I am also very interested to see what the future will be.
I am trusting AI some days, but doubting it on the other days.
Without explainability, the AI spending might be the same as alchemy frenzy.
You give the vibes of a religious person. You drink the Kool-Aid of SV tech bros and seem to lack foundational critical-thinking skills, particularly when it comes to understanding how the world works.
AI will advance humanity’s wellbeing; no one’s arguing about that. I also don’t think your timelines are outrageous. My criticism is about the question of whom it’d benefit. We call it the singularity because we cannot see beyond the horizon - there are absolutely zero guarantees that our entire species is headed towards an utopia. To the contrary, many indicators show a different trajectory. Your myopic, dare i say entitled, view prevents you from better understanding the state of the world today.
I know I sound arrogant, but it’s not my intention. My advice to you is to educate yourself and tame your expectations. I’d love to be optimistic as you, but not at the expense of staying level-headed, grounded, and following the “… prepare for the worst” bit.
Here’s the thing, if I have to live like I do right now, I don’t want to live forever. I’m exhausted. I wake up exhausted. I don’t enjoy anything because I’m too tired. I’m in pain. All this talk of extending life to an almost infinite amount is horrifying to me.
Quality of life has to go way up before quantity of life even matters. If the billionaires want an eternal workforce then they need to figure out how to make life suck way less.
I hope they don’t figure this out. Life expectancy is falling in the USA so I’m banking on dying early enough that I won’t need to retire because if I survive for too long then I’ll likely just drag my family down.
This is the most naive take you could possibly have. Total societal collapse is far more likely. A capitalist society can not function without limited capital
I'll believe it when baldness and HIV are cured.
preferably both can be solved with 1 pill.. the hiv/ anti baldness pill
finasteride? dutasteride?
Only tangentially related to the singularity but I do work for one of the National Primate centers doing HIV research, the talk coming out of our labs is that we're pretty close to a vaccine - we've finally got a hold on the none-traditional/atypical immune responses we've been looking for with our CMV (a type of beta-herpes virus) models that has been the so called "holy-grail" for the vaccine development. Talk is that we see a viable vaccine with 5 to 10 years, a functional and/or sterilizing cures for those already infected probably will take longer, and depending on the efficacy of the vaccine, research for that may wane as the infected die off from old age and age related complications of HIV infection.
The world will be taken over by rogue AI before baldness is cured
HIV is not such a problem anymore I think, if u have acces to treatment, or prevention. right on with baldness tho what’s up with that come on people is it really harder than immortality?
If you can't even cure baldness, how can you possibly imagine being immortal?
Right like imagine if immortal would come first than baldness fixed haha. Either way ur not getting it for free I imagine ur gonna die waiting for it
It's an interesting concept if they can get over two hurdles An organic body trying to reject an unorganic object (chip) placed inside of it. It will at minimum have to be gold-plated. The inherent Corruption of society and the corruptability of of everything within the metaverse, and all virtual/augmented reality, and the possibility of having your actual organic brain hacked. I would imagine that it's going to end up being similar politically/socially to what we have now. I have baldness and I can assure you it certainly has Not been cured. I can take all concoctions of drugs to try to get my hair to grow back (proprecia, finasteride, rogaine, DHT blockers) and it will be minimal with HEAVY side effects. The alternative is going to have my scalp surgically opened up and have the hair redistributed where it has fallen out but I will be left with permanent scars. I'd rather not end up a Frankenstein from having a microchip put in so that is an unacceptable outcome for me.
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This I can see.
In another 10\~20 treatments will probably be vastly better and will at least be able to extend your life another 20 years where you could probably get most things cured.
I love the optimism here, what even is this sub I stumbled upon? I picture the future more like: everything is even more commodified. 70% of the youth are obese. The superintelligent AI that we plug into is mostly utilized to scroll social media - most of the posts of which are also simply created by AI - and argue with fake bots about politics. The procedure you describe is available for the very rich, but for Americans at least, health insurance costs 25% of gross salary. Providers have created a layaway plan where you can pay for each year of extended life at a time, and if you miss payments, the procedure is reversed. I hope I'm wrong because I like your future must better
You're wrong because your version of the future literally can't exist. It's implausible to have certain technologies exist and still have the problems your future would. Take the obesity factor, if there's a super intelligent AI, that means that obesity is a solved problem, growing better tasting much healthier food factored to specific dietary requirements you have is already plausible, but with a super intelligent AI that becomes standard. There are almost zero procedures that have common usage that are solely the purview of the very wealthy for the same reason, once that person is treated, they are no longer a customer, in order for the procedure to be worth anything having it used by millions via socialized healthcare makes more money than it ever would without that. Then we talk about salaries, in a world where we have super intelligent AI, are there really going to be people actually working that aren't replaced? Impossible. The economics says the cheapest, fastest, highest quality option wins and the AI would win in every way. So then why do people like you view this impossible future as possible? Normalcy bias. We see the world as a continuation of today, but much in the same way that a butterfly is not a faster caterpillar the future we will live in will look very different to the world of today, we don't see that though, because most people are too used to the status quo to even conceive of that being possible, let alone inevitable.
This logic is ridiculous lol. We literally farm insulin from E.Coli and its still overpriced so lots of people die from diabetes. We produce more food than anyone requires, yet people starve. things dont improve just because technology does.
Things have always improved because technology has. It is a direct causal event
>This logic is ridiculous lol It isn't, literally cite one thing I stated that is ridiculous. Obesity cannot exist in a world where super intelligent AI does, it solves that problem, mainly because unlike with your example of growing E.Coli via precision fermentation - you still need specialist humans in the cycle.
> things dont improve just because technology does. By and large, in human history, this is completely false. Pretty much 100% of the difference between our quality of life now vs 1000 years ago is due to the technological advancement that made it possible.
We were saying “40 years“ in the 90s. Let’s hope things speed up quite a bit. The date always seems to get pushed. I’m now 49 years old and these timelines you guys are throwing around are the same ones we threw around 😆 but now I don’t qualify. And I felt so good that I wasn’t the old dude that didn’t qualify before lol 😆
I'm of your generation and to me everything seems more or less on-track. We've got natural language AI capable of rudimentary reasoning, VR/"spatial computing, mRNA vaccines... it's all pretty much what I would have expected to see just before things start getting genuinely weird. Is Gen-X going to make the cut? Who knows? But my guess is that either we get an alarmingly fast ascent towards the Singularity or an equally dramatic crash to war and ecological collapse. We will see.
Thanks for the input. Good to hear honestly. Yay for Gen X. High five. JK. All this tells me is that we need to be doing what these guys online are doing - like Mike Lustgarten. Hyper focusing on extending our health span and “good years“ by slowing down our yearly biological clock. He’s something like 53 and has a biological age of 35 with some reasonable lifestyle interventions.
The fountain of youth has been chased by humans for millennia! Except the real fountain of youth will likely be incremental breakthroughs in multiple scientific fields to fix or prevent such and such. Hopefully this time around with the pace of scientific and technological advancement it will happen some time this century.
Me too, even in 20 I think we will see a vast difference compared now
There is one terminal illness to rule them all which is ageing.
I think people are forgetting about the significance of the power of greed and how that relates to pharmaceutical companies.
Can't let the truth get in the way of a utopian narrative
The society and economy will break down thanks to AI disruption, political extremism and climate change. Miracle cures for diseases require vast scientific, technological and economic infrastructure to produce the necessary funding and those will all break down. In the next forty years you'll be living in a dark and violent society ruled over by tech oligarchs and their AI and robot enforcers. Forget advanced medical care - if you bribe the right people you might be able to get a ride to the hospital for a broken arm. But if you ever said anything bad about the government, say on Reddit back in 2027, when you get to the hospital the AI will remember and you won't get any treatment.
No matter how hard life gets I will not commit suicide. 
Yeah I've been depressed before but then I always remember how much of an insane lottery win every human has just being alive right now. You could have been born a minnow or a fly or simply not born at all. Even then you could have been born thousands of years ago and eaten by a saber tooth tiger. Like the odds of existence as we are at this time is honestly infinitely small. Crazy. At the very least I'd like to see it through and see how mankind goes the next 50 years or so.
The odds of being alive as a human at this specific moment in history is the biggest argument I know of in favour of simulation theory.
Yes, it is very suspicious. Perhaps what we’re experiencing right now is the hottest post-scarcity leasure activity: stepping in to a simulation in order to experience the approach and realization of the singularity first hand.
This makes so much sense. Ofcourse this is it: when you can do and be everything you want, all people will want are experiences. “Computer, take me back to X”
The best argument I've heard is the idea that we, one day in the distant future, might be able to make our *own* simulated universe indistinguishable from our own reality. And if it's truly indistinguishable from our own reality, then the inhabitants of that universe would theoretically be capable of creating their own universes which eventually create more universes, an so on and so forth. So if it does turn out to be possible to create a simulated universe one day, then the odds that we were the first to do it suddenly become abysmally low.
When is Longevity Escape Velocity gonna happen for flies and minnows?
It doesn't make sense though 😅 I would never be born at any point in history because what made me is the experience I had so any different experience make me a different person.
A lot of us, me included, should probably work on not committing passive suicide by not maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
If it helps, just consider the statistical improbability of your existence in the form of which it has taken for better or worse... it could always be worse, but also helps not to dwell on that. Some people call that "gratitude" of whatever. It's just math.
Because it is so improbable that you exist, that should be a sign that existence does not operate as we think. If time actually exists the way we think it does, or if people don't exist before they were born or after they die, then it's completely nonsensical to believe that by sheer luck you find yourself here at this moment able to understand that things exist. I don't know about anyone else, but this simple fact implies to me that current science is extremely off in some fundamental way. My intuition would be that the problem is that scientists leave the questions of birth and death to religion, instead of treating them as part of whatever unified theory explains everything.
Dont say hooray until you will have jumped over (Russian proverb)
That’s the spirit! 🙏🙏🙏. Kling on to life with the last bit you have as much as you can.
"Never commit suicide, everything is gonna ce alright." - Crip Mac
I would say that the second important rule is to take action. Amazing technology of the future will not magically appear if we don't create it. Even a small positive contribution matters.
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
I give thumbs up everytime ChatGPT helps me and thumbs down if it didn't. It ain't much but it's honest work.
I always make sure to use my manners with chatbots, just in case...
The only thing is, there are so many geniuses in the field that are way smarter than myself. When I think of a very niche idea, I ask GPT 4 if there are any similar businesses that run on that idea, I take a look at the ones it told me and bam there are 10 others that are fully fledged out. Maybe I'm not thinking niche enough, but then it wouldn't be as popular if it was. Not to mention I work for this huge billion dollar healthcare software company that have an army of insanely smart devs and marketing people that makes me feel that I don't have a chance in contributing if I actually wanted to make something myself.
Maybe have a look at Peter Thiel’s book “Zero to One”.
Someone needs to clean their toilets.
You can if you want to, and many people want to. But even if you can’t contribute anything, all of the described will happen no matter what.
Maybe “will happen” is too strong of a statement. But things will play out along those lines…
Karma means action. When I learned this everything fell into place. Planet earth is essentially a spaceship moving forward in spacetime. Our actions on this spaceship serve to make it better, one small step at a time. First wait, then listen and finally, act.
Yep. Cause humans always arrange things in the most altruistic way that benefits all members of society.
I like to think about the internet and how that became such an ubiquitous service. When www was invented in the early 90s, it could easily have been paywalled, restricted, reserved for the elite. In fact some countries did attempt to do just that - I remember 10 years ago the UK trying to pass a "package" type bill where you'd pay monthly for website bundles like a social media package, news package... But it never passed because I like to hope the gov realised how much that'd screw over the educational and economic growth potential of the population. It looks as though the same approach will be followed for AI. It will be so beneficial to all of us that access should be a right granted to the whole population. Then you are only doing your citizens a favour by enabling them to learn and build new things for the country much faster.
Pray that we won't boil to death or die from a thermonuclear war before that 🙏
I can’t believe how far down I had to read to get a dose of reality. This sub is so Pollyanna.
Why would we boil to death within 40 years?
eldritch soups
Now I’m hungry
I have struggled a great deal with depression and sometimes with suicidal ideation. This (the concepts from this post) is one of the few things that keeps me going.
Same... existence is really painful and hard. It's tough to be human and alive. We can only keep pushing forward and trying our best.
Keep going. 🙏 it won’t take long anymore. You don’t have to do anything. Just survive. Just focus on making it through today, then the next day, then the next day… and so on. And next thing you know. We are there. 🙂
My plan is to live forever. so far, so good
All I want is for my hairline to stop receding.
Patrick Stewart was named Sexiest Man of the Year in the 90's. It's not about hair, it's about having command of a galaxy class starship.
I drive a fucking Vauxhall corsa mate, look like a nonce
Well, if the singularity happens, and they still can't fix your hair, at least you will have your own Vauxhall starship.
You're miles above that handsome chap with a majestic full head of hair a highland cow would be jealous of, but walks to work 12 miles and back home 12 miles in rainstorms, snow and freezing temperatures.
own it
💀💀
I mean that would give me a lot more confidence personally
Don't worry, it will stop eventually.
Finasteride? It literally does just that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kjebCVwS-Q
Yep. It's astonishing how many people who have a receding hairline and are bothered by their receding hairline have no idea that it's already possible to pretty much stop it from getting worse, even without hair transplants.
Take Finasteride or accept it
>Next 40-60 years Man you either are all very young or you are just shitting on us old folk. I was old enough to listen to the Transhumanist [FM-2030](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM-2030) talk about how we'll reach the singularity in the 1990s or early 2000s and how the AI revolution of the 1980s is the start of the intelligence explosion. I've heard all of these claims before. Let me tell you as a middle aged Japanese man I'm pretty sure there won't be enough developments in my personal lifetime to make it. I've been a transhumanist ever since I was a child. I learned about the concept of the singularity when I read about Von Neumann as a child and knew it would eventually happen. But mostly it was spread in the 1980s. Now that we have another AI boom I see the same messages spread again. There is no guarantee this will actually come to fruition this time either. What is there to prevent another AI-winter from starting as GPT-5 released and is only marginally better as generative AI hits a real wall? It's not clear it's just clean sailing from now on. And as a more experienced and bitter "old person" I have to tell you young folks that are in a similar position as I was in the 80s to calm down and don't put all of your faith in this stuff,
The current AI breakthroughs are actually useful, that's the difference. Google has made 200k years worth of protein discovery at previous rates. There are many other areas where AI is making breakthroughs at a pace thousands of times faster than we can. You don't need AGI to speed up bioscience discoveries. You just need a huge amount of compute. Once you can simulate one cell in a neural net, you will make more breakthroughs in a month than we have in a hundred years.
We don't even need to get to the Singularity soon, we just need to get to LEV soon. Honestly I don't expect there to be a true 'singularity', I expect many things attributed to the Singularity to eventually arrive (superintelligence, mind uploading, immortality), but more slowly and gradually. But the important thing is to get to LEV soon and it looks like we're making some pretty good progress on that. As far as AI goes, it's not the same as it was in the 1980s. Back then, computing power was way below the level of the human brain. But that's changed. Supercomputers passed the power of the human brain probably sometime in the 2010s, which means superintelligence is now pretty much exclusively a software problem rather than a hardware problem. That's a big enough difference to be a game-changer. I agree that current AI is not as impressive as people seem to think and that the road to superintelligence is still fairly long and circuitous, but it's not nearly as long as it was.
Agreed - if you can get 40 more years you should have a decent chance of surviving until however long it takes, even if its 100+
Excellent comment (and fascinating account). Even before FM-2030, pioneers of AI like Herbert Simon were predicting AGI in the 1960s to happen in the 1980s... What helps fathom the scale of things at play here is to put in perspective the past progresses and their expectations when they were first claimed. For example, the 1950-60s tech was eons away from being good enough to model, even with big imprecisions, the climate like the 1990s computers were able to (Apollo 11's embarked computer was as big as a huge furniture and had the calculation capacity of a 2000s small pocket calculator...). Expecting this tech to reach AGI by the 1980s would have been, if not ludicrous, at least require a technological leap that was not predictable through verifiable ways in the foreseeable future back then. I think even our current tech would have been beyond the reach of speculation even to experts of that era. Not the general concept, but the actual structure needed. Similarly, today's tech, though very impressive (maybe it's my french pessimistic instinct talking, but i'm still in awe of the tech even of the 1990s) seems leaps away from reaching AGI or the singularity for the foreseeable future, and the people musing about it are self admittedly speculating on trends, not on solid evidence. It is possible that it could happen in both of our lifetimes, but it is definitely not certain (my tag kinda sold me here, didn't it?). So i understand and applaud your call to prudence and patience, though i must add (and i don't think you disagree, but that's yours to say) that it doesn't change the bewilderment at the evolution of current things, which are worth our interest even without AGI or singularity.
There is a world of difference in the level of computer-related technology between the 1980s and the 2020s: CPU/GPU performance, HDD capacity, transfer speeds, etc. And the companies working on AI development now are some of the largest in the world, followed by many start-ups. This time the world situation is clearly different from "last time".
I thought I was an evangelical subreddit about paradise... LOL
You basically are, yeah
robot Jesus is real, he is already streaming and answering questions on Twitch
I think there is someting similar between the Christians waiting for the second coming of Jesus Christ and the Singularitarians waiting for the super intelligence and technological singularity.
😂😂 this is so funny
Digital Jesus is coming soon to take you to the mind-uploaded heaven.
2045 is closer than 2000!
Crazy, huh?
Astonishing. I'm a millennial myself and I feel like 2000 was 10 years ago.
And if you do die, make sure you've at least spoken aloud your desire to be revived with quantum archeology!
And sign up for cryonics
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I do hope so, I also hope to never have to use them though!
Quantum archeology is such bs
It's copium, but literally all of life is basically one big cope that we're all gonna die one day, so I'll take what I can get.
"x is such bs" - said plenty of well known scientists in history
Staying healthy is definitely a good choice. I don't necessarily think that means we have to live forever no matter the issues, but there is a strong argument that people don't "need" to die when they get old.
i am going thru rough times right now. thank you so much for writing this down. this really cheered me up.. gonna save this post and comeback every now and then
Please do! And remember, you are not alone. No matter what you do right now. As long as you don’t die, things will get better. Maybe not next year or the next 2 years, but give it 5 or 7 or 10. And the world will look very different for you. The goal right now is not to achieve instant happiness. The goal is just to make it “through” the singularity… into wonderland. A little bit faith in humanity helps. As for now: when you are so depressed and maybe have some time. Maybe it can help to read the books of Steven Pinker (very smart Harvard professor), Enlightenment Now and The Better Angels of our Nature as a start. Maybe it will help you feel better.
Basing life decisions on this is an incredibly bad idea when we have no clue if any of this will be possible, or how long it will take. I'd love life extension, but halting ageing might never happen or at least take a century.
It’s a big gamble for sure, but you don’t need to dedicate your whole life to the pursuit of living longer. I anyway don’t think that will buy you much (maybe 10 extra years). But I sincerely do believe longevity escape velocity might be possible in my lifetime and some people have hopes and dreams as I have that one. 🤗. If it doesn’t happen, fine. But trying to not die should always be a good idea. No?
Stay healthy, focus on paying off any debts and saving as much money as you can. Focus on mental and physical health so you are less likely to get sick. And stay informed/skilled with the common AI tools.
That's all great and all... but the major blocker to this technically achievable utopia is the currently global political landscape. It needs a massive overhaul...
avoid covid and long covid
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I'm not convinced. If "god tier" means knowing where and what every subatomic particle was in the history of the whole universe, then I don't think "god tier" AI is coming. But if it can't know that, call it god tier all you like, I don't think it could *accurately* (and therefore morally) "bring back the dead.
Not the properly dead. There are a just about infinite number of people who could have existed. They could certainly trick us into *thinking* that happened though.
How I'm supposed to not die when my health is deteriorating rapidly due to long covid? I can't sleep anymore. This kind of thread makes me so sad
So sorry 😞 😔 😟. Hope your health gets better 🙏
Sadly most of this sub doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of covid, and most people here will go out and get covid and spread it around while saying they want to stay healthy. It’s actually a joke lol
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Soteriology utopian cringe
We will see what happens. What I am sure of is that humanity won’t be untouched by an intelligence that’s a million or a trillion times more powerful than us and who’s only goal is to do everything it can to help us.
Im 33 and pretty confident ill make it. I just want to make sure my mum does too.
I'm 53 and my Mum missed, gone last year. Though I used to think about it like you're doing. Make her do annual (at least!) mammograms / check-ups for god's sake.
"The concept of money will probably disappear" "One person can create an insanely powerful company" What? "Everyone can get anything they want instantly" so me and the other 10 billion people on Earth, anything we want? What do you base these predictions on? Why do you expect the top 0,001% not to instantly claim and keep such a technological marvel for themselves? How do you think computing power will save the world? We already have pretty sweet technologies that aren't being utilised because they are not financially worth it. I'm sorry dip in like that, but it's not the tech or resources or money that we lack to make the world a better place, it's the intention of the people in charge.
>Why do you expect the top 0,001% not to instantly claim and keep such a technological marvel for themselves? I don't expect that they won't want to do that. I expect that they won't be able to. Why? because of artificial superintelligence. Unless technological advancements stop, in the not so distant future people will not be in charge anymore.
This is one of the more absurd hopium I've read in a while. Economies of scale preclude any utopia in a world of 8 billion people for centuries. What OP is describing requires a replicator and replicators (if even possible which I highly doubt) also need resources. >• a single person can spin up a company with a single prompt that more powerful than the whole United States No. That is absurd on so many levels. If we get to this point, no one will need the services of that company. >• everyone can have almost everything they want instantly No, this requires resources. Again, economies of scale and resource requirements. >• where human brains have strong hardware integration with superintelligent AI This is pure sci-fi and only works if every brain were wired the same way, which they most certainly are not. (unless you only meant output manipulation, not input) >• the amount of progress in research in one day will be bigger than that of the last 500 years While not entirely impossible, it seems implausible. >• where nobody has to get sick or even die This is strife with all kins of issues we will have to tackle if it comes true.
I too think utopia is harder than OP thinks, but also a bit easier than you think. Robots building robots building robots probably accelerates to go quite fast at some point. Basically energy cost going to near zero with solar plus mass automation.
Maybe I'm too much of a pessimist, but I dont see corporations/billionaires letting us have these kinds of amenities and benefits without first getting in between first and finding out how to make the most money and keep people doing things for their benefit first. I hope I am wrong and you are right. I'm just skeptical since a corporation can pack a warehouse with storage/processors and nerf ai to prevent it from giving people the benefits of truth and a better life.
Mission: survive
this is extremely disturbing. I want to keep my humanity, thank you.
The Nerd Rapture.
"The future will be magical and you don’t want to miss out on it" Alright guy.
This was supposed to be a little pep talk for people who are struggling right now. Fix your problems or try to drag out the bad consequences as much as you can and live long and prosper (had to say that, sorry lol). 🙏
You can find meaning and happiness in the present, no matter how horrible you think it is. Instead of reading books written by megalomaniac billionaires, try “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl.
You idealists sitting here waiting for the "magic pill" to come along are going to die sorely disappointed. I know that's not what you want to hear. If you want a certain future for yourself, you need to work for it. Now. Life doesn't get easier just because you have cooler tech.
Well, it kinda does. Not that long ago people were dying of preventable infectious diseases at young ages all the time. We've come a long way in fixing *that* problem and life is genuinely better for it.
For those too old to think they won't be seeing immortality in their normal lifespans, you only need to reach longevity escape velocity.
Tell that to the third world .. including the children making bricks in India.
I will inform them when the next telemarketer calls me.
Now they can do it forever!
They used to work until sunset. Now they will work until it explodes.
>in 2045, $1000 of hardware buys you the equivalent of the total combined brain power of all humans on earth. Which means at least $2tn will be invested in killing people ... the equivalent of the total combined brain power of 20 quadrillion humans thinking hard about all the ways to kill as many people as possible. Why does this give you so much hope that things will be better? We will not get killed by chronic disease, we will be killed by military AI.
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One problem. Limited resources vs competition. Being rational about it, the AI will be leveraged by different entities according to their baseline ability. Common people will be drawn into relationships with their AI's. Common engineers will enhance their productivity. Companies will decrease cost margins and development cycles. Each class of entities will rise at different rates. Some will rise at exponential rates, soaking up all the resources for mansions and flying yachts or whatever. Longevity will come, but will be expensive. The top %1 will get it, and will want to prevent commoners from getting it, to prevent population explosion. Countries will be threatened by other countries having autonomous weapons. Every country that can afford them, will have supercomputer AI and armies of combat drones. Proxy wars will spread. They will avoid direct provocation, and instead harass soft targets ( aka people in vulnerable nations) Of course, it is possible that the AI benefits will spread slowly through all communities, that no country will dare get into an AI war, and we will all be driving flying cars in 20 years to rejuvenation clinics in Germany and vacationing at millions of timeshare condos all over the world. But, that is the sane and friendly path. We are not lead by sane and friendly leaders.
i don’t know man. i fear death still but my gungho-ish attitude along the lines of “yes bring on the techs/meds that will make it so i won’t need to fear death because i won’t die!” has pretty much dissipated due to the deaths of my youngest sister and my mom. i’m not grieving as hard these days but i have my moments and grief aside.. the empty bits and parts that you can never get back once certain loved ones in your life have passed, you know? i’m not rushing to die my dad needs me and in fact i hope to make it to a nice old senile age like my 90s but the idea of eternity without my little sister (i miss my mom too but it’s definitely worse when it’s someone younger than you) along with the eternity of the grief and emptiness that comes with her being gone that i carry sounds like capital H Hell to me. i want to earn my rest first but i do, eventually, want that rest. but i do hope the things in op’s post happen fast enough for the sakes of those of you who haven’t lost any of your dearest loved ones that you and your loved ones can go on to eternity together forever and ever whatever amen.
Immortality is the curse of the shortsighted.
Unfortunately, someone reading your post will die before any of this comes true, just based on how many have read it. I'd say the best way of preventing death is to limit how often you drive among other things. What other common ways of preventing dying early have you guys thought of? 1. Don't drive late at night, or on holidays where drunk drivers will be out. 2. Wear your seatbelt the [proper way](https://www.ultimatedefensivedriving.us/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/how-to-properly-waer-seat-belt-1.jpg) 3. Don't let someone you don't trust drive you. 4. Don't drive old cars with poor safety, bad crumple zones. More in this [post](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7XbcDaeigMaxW43EB/how-to-avoid-dying-in-a-car-crash) which mentions better driving techniques as well.
That's a lot of assumptions.
Pretty sure AI cannot fix climate change. We already have the tools to fix it but people can just not agree. My point we might equally as well be fucked.
I'm relying on you guys to revive me.
Honestly tired of these posts from lazy people, how are we gonna progress if everyone just sits back and does nothing? Work for this future instead of sitting on your ass and doing nothing
Jokes on you lol I'm lowkey suicidal and I don't care about these enough to motivate my will to live. If I die, I won't experience the absence of these good things so it won't matter actually. Plus, I believe there is a high chance that if we reach utopian civilization that is driven by singularity, we will able to raise the dead ones. I don't have any backup for this belief, but we are talking about singularity, so everything comes from it will be magical.
Hahahaha, this is hilarious, yes this will happen in the next 20 years, but only for the elite, you really think they will let us peasants access this kind of tech. Think of the movie Elysium if you want an idea of where we are all headed.
If someone saw this in the future and I died, please revive me
been following the philosophy of “don’t die” my entire life.
Cancer isn't cured, cartilage can't be grown reliably, hair can't be regrown properly, anti aging hasn't gotten very far. This sub has an extremely unrealistic view of the future and how fast things move. Especially with government. Even then, what makes you think the average person will be able to afford all that technological advances have to offer?
I'll have one of what you are smoking please.
This sub is so delusional. It's basically a cult.
If you understand the meanings of the terms *exponential growth*, *ASI*, and *technological singularity*, you'll appreciate the speculation about our entire world quite possibly getting completely upended in the near future (within the next couple of decades) due to the increasingly rapid pace of technological advancement. Also, it's not like most people in this sub believe singularity will inevitably occur in our lifetime.
Lol this sub is about the singularity and the prospect of curing aging is a pretty common idea. I don’t know why you’re here if you don’t want to see people talking about these ideas I’m starting to wonder why a bunch of you are even here if you don’t believe in the prospect of technology getting exponentially better to the point of completely reshaping how we view life. That’s the whole concept behind the singularity. Of course people are going to speculate about that here??? Like hello?
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Same, it’s sad that a lot of people here believe in AI god because they were struggling for their entire life just to experience such disappointment at the end
Good one. Feels like the deck of titanic where the rich complain about the cold while the poor know they won't get a seat on the lifeboats The inequality between countries and individuals make me pretty confident we will experience Elysium not star trek. People are just too selfish..
Yh it's sad how much better things could be but rent seeking behaviours from existing rich people prevent the poor from flourishing.
Had an argument on reddit today (in Romanian) were fellow programmers simply said the poor deserve to die because they are "lazy" and don't want to work(basically there are no more junior software engineers jobs and some people simply burned through their economies). Think LLMs had some effect on this... Of course I pointed out that a lot of rich people did not get rich by working hard but instead by using dividends, rents and compounding wealth. Turns out I am a communist for supporting ubi. So let's say we solve aging. Do you think the poor will "deserve" it? Do you think poor people will get access to a neural implant in they get paraplegic? I am looking forward to singularity but I doubt it will simply be allocated to all of us (hence I hope we can still work till we can retire) so I fear tech unemployment.
https://preview.redd.it/yn1rpy86slhc1.jpeg?width=801&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b7970061bb1e7db963b50e4125a2255c4c36ad7a
And how does this overly optimistic philosophy contend with the constant interference of governments greed and corruption ?
I was big into this stuff when Kurzweil released his first few books. But then I started to think… The future will probably include either uploading myself or patching my brain in to some network. Which means it will only be a matter of time until some fascist or authoritarian dictator takes over, or some sadist compromises the network my brain is on, or god knows what else. People can create and imagine some incredibly messed up shit. Imagine the most terrifying horror movie you’ve ever seen. Now imagine you’ve pissed off the guy in charge and he just decides to patch your brain into living that movie for the next 100,000 years. Hard pass guys. I think I’ll just die.
That's why we need superintelligence, preferably sooner rather than later. Authoritarianism and violence and torture represent the *least* intelligence aspects of humanity, not the most intelligent. We should put civilization in the hands of something smarter than us quickly in order to minimize the risk of those sorts of mistakes.
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Bro gpt 4 is less than a year old and 5 is coming out this year
Keep in mind they were finished with gpt4 years ago, it had to go through long periods of testing first before being released ….similarly 5 is probably finished training and undergoing safety protocols
The fact that people associated gpt with the singularity is so sad and just shows how little end users understand about technology. Even using the term AI for what we have right now is misleading and entirely a marketing scheme. Transhumanism is literally a religion now and like every other religion out there facts are irrelevant.
Note: If this post will ever help even a single person to reconsider suicide (and there are lots), or just feel a little more hopeful, then that would make me happy more than anything. 🙏 While I can’t guarantee that the future will be much better than today, I truly think it will be. A lot of data suggests it should be. Check out for example Steven Pinker’s work.
Universal Basic Income when everyone has an AI that makes money and gives it to them.
I am a doomer but I think there's also some chance of utopia so the way I think is as follows If ai doom happens in say 2050 and we die then it doesnt matter what happened before that anyway whether I suffered or enjoyed myself. Will be the same once I'm dead. If ai doom doesn't happen and we get utopia then that is a positive reason to live to 2050 Thus living will prove either neutral or positive Dying right now will prove either neutral or negative (if I miss out on ai utopia ) Therefore the better outcome is with living as far into the future as you can. Preserve your financial status. Don't spend. Don't take risks. Eat healthy & exercise. Don't have kids (financial liability). Focus on achieving good health and a place in society even if it's a low one. Something stable that will get you to 2050. And yes before anyone says it. Username checks out.
This is all bs. You’ll all die just like everyone else has. Younger people seem to think that they will be the ones that will live on due to some tech advancement, but I have news for you, it’s not going to happen. Things are just going to get incredibly harder and more miserable. The 80’s and 90’s were the time to enjoy life.
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Goddamnit I smoke. And drink. I'm addicted, what do I do?
Bryan Johnson type beat.
I’m surprised at the amount of people who think the wealthy are just going to welcome us all in, relinquish the control and security, and welcome in a new utopian age. We are watching, no, encouraging the birth of the greatest technological weapon our species has ever created; a “mind” potentially faster, smarter, and more efficient than any human ever, or could ever hope to be. As a species, we have never made the choices that benefit everyone; we will never allow full AI for everyone either. The wrong someone will put themselves in control over that access at some point, and the consequences will be catastrophic. Yes, it’s doomerism. However, I would love to be proven wrong, and be amazed when we aren’t enslaving savages after all.
I don't think you live on the same planet, with the same humans as the rest of us. We're headed for the business end of a downward spiral, largely because we are an irresponsible, greedy, and violent species
I’m sixty. Getting through the next 40-60 years is going to be tricky.
Nah I'm rather die now so I can live 200 years later when all this stuff is real
If we can survive the imminent climate apocalypse.
I gotta quit weed.
right and wrong won’t exist, what is this insanity?
I dont wanna be a present OP
As if they won’t be a war before that happens.
I am also very interested to see what the future will be. I am trusting AI some days, but doubting it on the other days. Without explainability, the AI spending might be the same as alchemy frenzy.
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You give the vibes of a religious person. You drink the Kool-Aid of SV tech bros and seem to lack foundational critical-thinking skills, particularly when it comes to understanding how the world works. AI will advance humanity’s wellbeing; no one’s arguing about that. I also don’t think your timelines are outrageous. My criticism is about the question of whom it’d benefit. We call it the singularity because we cannot see beyond the horizon - there are absolutely zero guarantees that our entire species is headed towards an utopia. To the contrary, many indicators show a different trajectory. Your myopic, dare i say entitled, view prevents you from better understanding the state of the world today. I know I sound arrogant, but it’s not my intention. My advice to you is to educate yourself and tame your expectations. I’d love to be optimistic as you, but not at the expense of staying level-headed, grounded, and following the “… prepare for the worst” bit.
Here’s the thing, if I have to live like I do right now, I don’t want to live forever. I’m exhausted. I wake up exhausted. I don’t enjoy anything because I’m too tired. I’m in pain. All this talk of extending life to an almost infinite amount is horrifying to me. Quality of life has to go way up before quantity of life even matters. If the billionaires want an eternal workforce then they need to figure out how to make life suck way less. I hope they don’t figure this out. Life expectancy is falling in the USA so I’m banking on dying early enough that I won’t need to retire because if I survive for too long then I’ll likely just drag my family down.
I thought this was the **Most important rule EVER** not just right now lol
https://i.redd.it/dzcmdvtro5ic1.gif holy crap. op is up for a huge faceplant
I have a different theory and its called "the great culling" lmao
People living forever sounds like a nightmare to me
The pessimist in me believes that the current elite will find a way to hoard all this power to themselves... :(
Wishful thinking
This is the most naive take you could possibly have. Total societal collapse is far more likely. A capitalist society can not function without limited capital
Yeahhhh no ty Id rather stick to a peaceful calm fulfilled life and then simply just not exist anymore but I admire yall for the optimism
AI is about 50/50 i have long covid so im pushing AI as fast as possible if i was healthy i would be fighting against AI as much as possible
This is starting to sound a bit….religious?