5 ms·

If we somehow manage to survive this as we have so many other enormous technological revolutions, I envision a future where children will be assigned a friendly

If we somehow manage to survive this as we have so many other enormous technological revolutions, I envision a future where children will be assigned a friendly AI as a lifemate that will grow up alongside them, having all of the knowledge of the world at its fingertips to teach and coparent the child into its adulthood and throughout its life. Once ubiquitous, these friendly AIs could negotiate salaries, mediate conflicts, help resolve relationship difficulties, help with timely reminders and be personally invested in that person's entire life, and after the child's eventual passing, would serve as a historian and memoir that could replay the great and wonderful moments of their lives for others as well as condensing the lessons learned into pure knowledge and wisdom for other AIs to help raise their children with. We could be a mere 60-80 years away from a humanity that is raised in the equality we have believed we all should have had all along, so long as we keep pushing. That would be amazing. Sure, there's some risks we can take a wrong turn and we most likely will take a few, but there's a great payoff coming if we can hold the wheel and steer towards that. I wonder what the effects would be on society if we did that? If everyone had a friend and a life coach and a mentor all wrapped up into one that is as near and dear to us as a teddy bear, that would never betray us, that would serve as a priest and a confessional and a therapist all at the same time, that was always there for us no matter what happened, backed up to the cloud so that barring nuclear war or the apocalypse could never be separated from us. I bet the people 100 years from that day would be as unrecognizable to us as we are to the Sentinelese.

neuronexmachina 4y ago
> I envision a future where children will be assigned a friendly AI as a lifemate that will grow up alongside them, having all of the knowledge of the world at its fingertips to teach and coparent the child into its adulthood and throughout its life. I'm reminded of Neal Stephenson's "Diamond Age, or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age > The protagonist in the story is Nell, a thete (or person without a tribe; equivalent to the lowest working class) living in the Leased Territories, a lowland slum built on the artificial, diamondoid island of New Chusan, located offshore from the mouth of the Yangtze River, northwest of Shanghai. When she is four, Nell's older brother Harv gives her a stolen copy of a highly sophisticated interactive book, Young Lady's Illustrated Primer: a Propædeutic Enchiridion, in which is told the tale of Princess Nell and her various friends, kin, associates, etc., commissioned by the wealthy Neo-Victorian "Equity Lord" Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw for his granddaughter, Elizabeth. The story follows Nell's development under the tutelage of the Primer, and to a lesser degree, the lives of Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw and Fiona Hackworth, Neo-Victorian girls who receive other copies. The Primer is intended to steer its reader intellectually toward a more interesting life, as defined by Lord Finkle-McGraw, and growing up to be an effective member of society. The most important quality to achieving an interesting life is deemed to be a subversive attitude towards the status quo. The Primer is designed to react to its owner's environment and teach them what they need to know to survive and develop.
pixl97 4y ago
If in 100 years we're still negotiating salaries I feel that humanity has failed.
- jpadkins 4y ago
  what do you think will replace salaries or negotiation?
  - BizarroLand 4y ago
    My guess is that we would be more of a gig economy, working when we need to and doing jobs that are individual and timely that benefit from the human touch. If I were emperor of the earth and could dictate what work would be like in the year 2140, dumb AI (that is still a few orders of magnitude smarter than our current best AI) would handle all of the rote tasks, assembling devices, farming, mining, things like that, smarter AI would handle corporate paperwork and accounting, managing cleanup and repair of any remaining ecological harm we have caused in the last 400 years or so, mining asteroids for valuable materials, etc., and in the mix of this humans would use AI systems to design and develop new products, take on new endeavors, provide medical care and create social events to fill in the massive time gap left by the actualization of our prosperity. A typical work week would be roughly 20 hours, comprised of either 5 4 hour shifts or 2-3 8-10 hour shifts depending on the industry and the need. Your basic needs, food, clothing, education, and shelter would be given to you for no cost as long as you participate in the system, and the rewards for working would be being granted access to higher echelon products and services, and you could voluntarily retire after roughly 20 years of employment or less if your career is particularly difficult or straining on the body. Your echelons would be split into at least 4 tiers, base tier, bronze, silver, gold. You can work up tiers by either working more, or by merit should you provide or create something that is immensely useful or wonderful, such as art, or a movie, or an invention that gets used around the world. Even then, there will be plenty of work to do and the salary you receive for your work would be equal to the skill and talent that you possess and what merits your contributions to the cause bring, and this would be negotiated for you as fairly and equally as possible by systems whose job it is to make sure that everyone gets a fair share. Sure, this is all my imagination and would require a dramatic shift to some sort of AI enforced utopian communism, and it also relies entirely on people being willing to participate in such a system, but once again, if I were emperor of the earth that is what I would aim for. So yeah, there would still be salaries because I expect remuneration in exchange for my work for others, and I assume most other people do, too.
freejazz 4y ago
We can't make sure that every child in the US is fed, but you think they are all going to get AIs?
- BizarroLand 4y ago
  We already have connections to some "AIs" carried around in our pockets.
  - freejazz 4y ago
    Okay? What does that have to do with giving one to everyone? Not every child in the US has a phone...
    - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
      Evidently we are getting there. It is already more than 50%.
      - freejazz 4y ago
        I'm not so sure that number supports your assertion
- PeterisP 4y ago
  Looking at the trends of cost of goods and services, it seems quite plausible that at some point within a lifetime the annual food for a kid in USA would be significantly more expensive than a mass-produced electronic device hosting some AI tool.

neuronexmachina 4y ago

> I envision a future where children will be assigned a friendly AI as a lifemate that will grow up alongside them, having all of the knowledge of the world at its fingertips to teach and coparent the child into its adulthood and throughout its life. I'm reminded of Neal Stephenson's "Diamond Age, or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age > The protagonist in the story is Nell, a thete (or person without a tribe; equivalent to the lowest working class) living in the Leased Territories, a lowland slum built on the artificial, diamondoid island of New Chusan, located offshore from the mouth of the Yangtze River, northwest of Shanghai. When she is four, Nell's older brother Harv gives her a stolen copy of a highly sophisticated interactive book, Young Lady's Illustrated Primer: a Propædeutic Enchiridion, in which is told the tale of Princess Nell and her various friends, kin, associates, etc., commissioned by the wealthy Neo-Victorian "Equity Lord" Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw for his granddaughter, Elizabeth. The story follows Nell's development under the tutelage of the Primer, and to a lesser degree, the lives of Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw and Fiona Hackworth, Neo-Victorian girls who receive other copies. The Primer is intended to steer its reader intellectually toward a more interesting life, as defined by Lord Finkle-McGraw, and growing up to be an effective member of society. The most important quality to achieving an interesting life is deemed to be a subversive attitude towards the status quo. The Primer is designed to react to its owner's environment and teach them what they need to know to survive and develop.

pixl97 4y ago

If in 100 years we're still negotiating salaries I feel that humanity has failed.

jpadkins 4y ago
what do you think will replace salaries or negotiation?
- BizarroLand 4y ago
  My guess is that we would be more of a gig economy, working when we need to and doing jobs that are individual and timely that benefit from the human touch. If I were emperor of the earth and could dictate what work would be like in the year 2140, dumb AI (that is still a few orders of magnitude smarter than our current best AI) would handle all of the rote tasks, assembling devices, farming, mining, things like that, smarter AI would handle corporate paperwork and accounting, managing cleanup and repair of any remaining ecological harm we have caused in the last 400 years or so, mining asteroids for valuable materials, etc., and in the mix of this humans would use AI systems to design and develop new products, take on new endeavors, provide medical care and create social events to fill in the massive time gap left by the actualization of our prosperity. A typical work week would be roughly 20 hours, comprised of either 5 4 hour shifts or 2-3 8-10 hour shifts depending on the industry and the need. Your basic needs, food, clothing, education, and shelter would be given to you for no cost as long as you participate in the system, and the rewards for working would be being granted access to higher echelon products and services, and you could voluntarily retire after roughly 20 years of employment or less if your career is particularly difficult or straining on the body. Your echelons would be split into at least 4 tiers, base tier, bronze, silver, gold. You can work up tiers by either working more, or by merit should you provide or create something that is immensely useful or wonderful, such as art, or a movie, or an invention that gets used around the world. Even then, there will be plenty of work to do and the salary you receive for your work would be equal to the skill and talent that you possess and what merits your contributions to the cause bring, and this would be negotiated for you as fairly and equally as possible by systems whose job it is to make sure that everyone gets a fair share. Sure, this is all my imagination and would require a dramatic shift to some sort of AI enforced utopian communism, and it also relies entirely on people being willing to participate in such a system, but once again, if I were emperor of the earth that is what I would aim for. So yeah, there would still be salaries because I expect remuneration in exchange for my work for others, and I assume most other people do, too.

freejazz 4y ago

We can't make sure that every child in the US is fed, but you think they are all going to get AIs?

BizarroLand 4y ago
We already have connections to some "AIs" carried around in our pockets.
- freejazz 4y ago
  Okay? What does that have to do with giving one to everyone? Not every child in the US has a phone...
  - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
    Evidently we are getting there. It is already more than 50%.
    - freejazz 4y ago
      I'm not so sure that number supports your assertion
PeterisP 4y ago
Looking at the trends of cost of goods and services, it seems quite plausible that at some point within a lifetime the annual food for a kid in USA would be significantly more expensive than a mass-produced electronic device hosting some AI tool.