I’ll be seventy later this year so I don’t worry about “the future” for myself much or how I should live my life differently. I’ve got some grandkids though and as far as my advice to them goes I tell their mom that the trades will be safer than clerical or white color jobs because robotics will lag behind AI. Sure you can teach an AI to do manual labor, like say brain surgery, but it’s not going to be making house calls. Creating a robotic plumber would be a massive investment and so not likely to happen. In my humble opinion.
Of course this assumes the world will still need plumbers in the near future. Personally I expect the world to still need plumbers and other tradespeople in the next twenty-plus years. Even if construction was cut back due to its 40% contribution to greenhouse gases there will still be homes that need maintenance.
My son is a tradesperson as is my son-in-law so I have some knowledge of that lifestyle.
I also know a bit about AI despite my age as I retired after a thirty year IT career including being a developer, software development team manager and the VP of Operations in a fifty person print and online textbook publishing company. Since retiring for the past three years I’ve been writing hard science fiction novellas and short stories about AI and Social Robots in the near future. About two thousand pages consisting of seven novellas and forty short stories so far. Hard science fiction requires a ton of research and thinking and I try to write every day.
I finished my first novella in August of 2020, a few months before Brian Christian published his book, “The Alignment Problem” and the term and issue became popularized. My own belief about AI timelines is that the adoption rate is going to be the fastest ever. See https://hbr.org/2013/11/the-pace-of-technology-adoption-is-speeding-up for technology adoption rates. AI will teach itself how to get smarter and AGI will arrive in just a few years.
Will we solve the “The Alignment Problem” before then? No – because the science of human values will turn out to be perhaps the most challenging technical work AI researchers ever face. What are values? What are they made of? How do they “work” technically? Did you mean genetically inherited values or learned values? Are they genes? If so how would we account for the effect of epigenetics on values as suggested by twin studies? Or are they neurological structures like some form of memory? How do they communicate with each other and change? Is each value made up of sub-values? How would you construct a Bayesian Network to emulate a human values system? Is there a better way? And so on. The science of human values is in its infancy so we are not going to solve the alignment problem any time soon. Unless of course… AI solves it for us. And wouldn’t that be an interesting scenario. Does this mean we’re all gonna be killed by AI? As any Master of Futures Studies program faculty member will tell you, it is impossible to predict the future.
Do I think these issues will effect my grandkids? Absolutely. Can I imagine their world? Not a chance. When I was twenty the personal computer, the internet and cell phones didn’t exist. My future career didn’t exist. So I don’t have much more advice for my grandkids other than the robotics/trades angle.
What would I do differently if I was twenty-something now? Well if I didn’t go into the trades I’d plan on working for any kind of company involved in the environment in any way. Unlike in my novella series where the World Governments Federation mandates population control in the real world people will continue to have babies and for the next thirty or forty years the global population will continue to grow. Then there are things like climate change, refugees and war etc. The environment will struggle to deal with all that and need a lot of hands on deck.
Now you might be thinking there’s more to life than a career. I agree. I write not to get published but as an act of self-expression, something I consider the highest calling of life. If you know what you get the greatest personal gratification from I recommend you find a way to make time for it.
I’ll be seventy later this year so I don’t worry about “the future” for myself much or how I should live my life differently. I’ve got some grandkids though and as far as my advice to them goes I tell their mom that the trades will be safer than clerical or white color jobs because robotics will lag behind AI. Sure you can teach an AI to do manual labor, like say brain surgery, but it’s not going to be making house calls. Creating a robotic plumber would be a massive investment and so not likely to happen. In my humble opinion.
Of course this assumes the world will still need plumbers in the near future. Personally I expect the world to still need plumbers and other tradespeople in the next twenty-plus years. Even if construction was cut back due to its 40% contribution to greenhouse gases there will still be homes that need maintenance.
My son is a tradesperson as is my son-in-law so I have some knowledge of that lifestyle.
I also know a bit about AI despite my age as I retired after a thirty year IT career including being a developer, software development team manager and the VP of Operations in a fifty person print and online textbook publishing company. Since retiring for the past three years I’ve been writing hard science fiction novellas and short stories about AI and Social Robots in the near future. About two thousand pages consisting of seven novellas and forty short stories so far. Hard science fiction requires a ton of research and thinking and I try to write every day.
I finished my first novella in August of 2020, a few months before Brian Christian published his book, “The Alignment Problem” and the term and issue became popularized. My own belief about AI timelines is that the adoption rate is going to be the fastest ever. See https://hbr.org/2013/11/the-pace-of-technology-adoption-is-speeding-up for technology adoption rates. AI will teach itself how to get smarter and AGI will arrive in just a few years.
Will we solve the “The Alignment Problem” before then? No – because the science of human values will turn out to be perhaps the most challenging technical work AI researchers ever face. What are values? What are they made of? How do they “work” technically? Did you mean genetically inherited values or learned values? Are they genes? If so how would we account for the effect of epigenetics on values as suggested by twin studies? Or are they neurological structures like some form of memory? How do they communicate with each other and change? Is each value made up of sub-values? How would you construct a Bayesian Network to emulate a human values system? Is there a better way? And so on. The science of human values is in its infancy so we are not going to solve the alignment problem any time soon. Unless of course… AI solves it for us. And wouldn’t that be an interesting scenario. Does this mean we’re all gonna be killed by AI? As any Master of Futures Studies program faculty member will tell you, it is impossible to predict the future.
Do I think these issues will effect my grandkids? Absolutely. Can I imagine their world? Not a chance. When I was twenty the personal computer, the internet and cell phones didn’t exist. My future career didn’t exist. So I don’t have much more advice for my grandkids other than the robotics/trades angle.
What would I do differently if I was twenty-something now? Well if I didn’t go into the trades I’d plan on working for any kind of company involved in the environment in any way. Unlike in my novella series where the World Governments Federation mandates population control in the real world people will continue to have babies and for the next thirty or forty years the global population will continue to grow. Then there are things like climate change, refugees and war etc. The environment will struggle to deal with all that and need a lot of hands on deck.
Now you might be thinking there’s more to life than a career. I agree. I write not to get published but as an act of self-expression, something I consider the highest calling of life. If you know what you get the greatest personal gratification from I recommend you find a way to make time for it.