A rare note of optimism?
The Up-side of Fatalism
There have been many people talking about existential threats lately, either triggered by the perception that AI is about to turn us into paperclips or that the open sourcing of deadly genetically modified viruses and the availability of desktop genome printing tech will bring upon us a new tsunami of bioterorist generated pandemics.
Despite what you might imagine, neither of these eventualities seem the most likely issues our species is currently facing, to me.
In my view, this makes me an optimist.
There is very little doubt in my mind that the world is going to be a much worse place in fifty years than it is today. Perhaps life will actually be unrecognizable in some parts of the planet to what it is today, and I'll come to the reasons why this might be the case, but for some life is going to be fine, and we - the human race - will probably prevail.
Let's get this out of the way straight out of the gate. AI won't play any significant direct role in the downfall of our species. It'll contribute significantly to making the world a shittier place to try live what we've come to believe is a civilized life, but in 20 years time, all the people who are applying most of the weight in the tug of war between now and the future won't recognize what we used to have as theirs, and we'll all be stuck with what we're able to have then. Nostalgia will be big business - but that’s nothing new…
Hyper functional tools evolving out of what the press currently recognize as AI will make it next to impossible to protect much of the infrastructure we now find indispensable from sporadic bouts of disruption - quite possibly state enabled, if not sponsored - as part of a cyber arms race of sorts.
I don't see an effective way to counter this issue across every domain of life, and believe instead that those people with the ability will instead simply move into states of periodic isolation, perhaps physically relocating themselves to “15 minute cities” populated with like minded individuals and rigorously policed (under the guise of smart cityness) to ensure that nobody attempts to upset the collective applecart through act or thought, or even algorithmically deduced future intention.
For the wealthy(est) these places could have exotic, purpose built form (maybe off in the desert somewhere). For the rest, these zones might be as vague as a neighborhood, a city block, an apartment complex…a remote farm…
For the economically non-mobile (which is also the numerical majority of the population), we'll just have to live with the shit.
Climate change, constant interruption and disruption of utilities and supply chains, public unrest and tribal conflict - that's where the rest of us will be eeking out a future of sorts.
Let’s face it, for many around the world this is already their present-day, but it’s likely to become even more so for more of the rest of us as our individual levels of wealth shake us out into tiers and leave those at the bottom wallowing in lies and clinging to the thinnest end of every possible wedge.
I do believe that the age-old promise of menial labour being taken over by machines is now more likely than ever - not for everyone straight away, but certainly for many low skilled repetitive workers - and that's going to have to usher in some form of limited Universal Basic Income. Initially this won't be very universal and might be very basic, but eventually it's going to need to expand enough to support most of the people who cannot find some other way of demonstrating sustainable value.
Does this future scenario represent some sort of dystopian nightmare? Well it depends where you’re standing when you look at it.
There are a set of relatively slow moving unfixables - climate, population decline, the shift away from fossil fuels (which is somewhat decoupled from the climate issue, even though that is supposed to be the motivator for the shift). Although we're approaching tipping points on some of these trajectories that are going to result in changes that will appear fast on the cosmic scale, we don't notice change at this pace.
I know that things have changed pre-covid to post-covid, but do I really remember precisely what it felt like to be pre-covid? Honestly, not really. There are anecdotes I might recount about life then and now, but they're no more than that, now that I live in a different world.
There are also a handful of fast moving modifiers - hyper-functional technologies (AI), trends of public opinion (both localised and globalised) and the effects of interstate tensions and hostilities. These things are happening at a pace that makes it feel to me as though they're nothing to do with me. They slide by on the travelator as I plod along on the pavement. I'll meet them at the other end when I get there…I guess.
News stories that speak of existential threats attract attention because they seem to smash through the fast and slow tracks that we're on, taking away the platform from which I have assembled my personal perspectives on the universe. That's why they're a little unsettling. Because they should be.
The optimistic truth is - however - that the likelihood of somebody pushing the big red nuclear button, or of city-scale space ships arriving out of the blue with a different type of big red button, and a different type of finger, seem really slim for the time being.
Perhaps I'll need to eat a hat or two once NATO decide which side of the fence they'd like to put Ukraine on, and the guy in Moscow decides what to do about that - not to mention the person in charge of the top half of the Korean Peninsula and whatever the heck his problem is…
But global kinetic conflict does not seem like a great idea for anyone today. Not when you think about how much you can get done without specifically blowing anything up.
Yay for the up-side. Go optimism!
Why not join in the conversation and give me somebody to argue or agree with? Drop me a line and let me know where you think things are headed from your place on the travelator.