Instead, we go gently. To quote Network, “All necessities provided. All anxieties tranquilized. All boredom amused.” And not much more.
This ending seems unlikely to me. If you have an economy running on autopilot, UBI for people, and robotic nannies, all that is necessary is a group of people who decide to have kids e.g. for religious reasons, or because it somehow becomes a status thing in their subculture. Exponential growth.
Of course, if the AI or law nudges people to become extinct—if the robotic nannies tell the kids not to follow their parents’ example, if the UBI does not apply to kids, if contraception is secretly added to food, etc., that would be a different story. (Possibly a combination of “amusing the most, and gently euthanizing the rest”.)
Not to put words in the author’s mouth, but when they said “We go gently...”, I don’t think they meant “go” as in become extinct, at least not any time soon. I took that to mean “go” into obscurity and stagnation instead of keeping on advancing technologically until we’re building Dyson spheres and colonizing other planets and all the science fiction stuff that most people believe humanity is going to do eventually. In that scenario, we would keep living on aimlessly for many millenia until some asteroid or other cosmic event took us out, because we had never advanced enough to be able to handle that or have colonies as a backup.
I agree with you that we’re unlikely to stop reproducing just because many humans get addicted to watching/interacting with content fed to us by a perfect algorithm for most of our waking hours. Raising a family seems to be one of those things that brings intrinsic meaning and pleasure to many people, so I believe you’d see more of it, not less—most of the reasons people are choosing not to have kids today are because they don’t have enough time or money in today’s economy and work environment, and in this scenario all those problems are solved. This scenario makes the assumption that the AI-fueled content machine would be so addictive that basically all humans would forsake all other pursuits and live like the people in WALL-E. I don’t think that’s necessarily true, and if it isn’t, we might see a population explosion requiring our AI-enabled oligarchic overlords to take control measures to keep it manageable.
Far from humanity going extinct, I think one possible catastrophe in the future, if AI advances roughly along these lines, is a Malthusian scenario where the population grows way beyond current levels thanks to AI optimizing the distribution of resources to make that possible, but becoming so dependent on complex AI logistics to provide everyone’s needs that any slight hiccup in the distribution network can quickly cause a famine that kills millions.
This scenario seems to allow enough room for AI alignment and humans still being in the driver’s seat on big picture issues that it wouldn’t decide to let us go extinct intentionally. We can hope.
I don’t disagree with you that this probably wouldn’t lead to extinction. That said, I’d expect birth rates to crater. The average teen already spends nearly 5 hours a day on current social media, and there’s every reason to expect AI social media that can generate something close to the most addictive video possible to be far more effective. Add in AI “boyfriends”/”girlfriends” that are far more attractive, supportive, etc. than any human, and many of the biological impulses that drive people to make families are diverted away from making real relationships and families. Only people with fairly strong desires for making real families and luddites would have much chance of overcoming the strong influences against it.
My confidence here is decent, but not amazing. Assuming the scenario happens roughly as described otherwise, I’d give roughly a 70% chance of a massive (as in far worse than currently predicted) population crash happening, but not extinction on (direct) account of it. Obviously, this is heavily contingent upon how addictive AI social media could be, which could be less or far more than described.
As cesspool said, this isn’t really meant to mean outright extinction, but I would expect a(n even more massive than already predicted) population collapse in this scenario. The line was basically talking about the end of human endeavor (which, to be fair, is somewhat intertwined with a population collapse in multiple ways). At a guess, I’d expect people having kids for religious/philosophical/moral reasons to become much rarer in this scenario, but not entirely go away.
This ending seems unlikely to me. If you have an economy running on autopilot, UBI for people, and robotic nannies, all that is necessary is a group of people who decide to have kids e.g. for religious reasons, or because it somehow becomes a status thing in their subculture. Exponential growth.
Of course, if the AI or law nudges people to become extinct—if the robotic nannies tell the kids not to follow their parents’ example, if the UBI does not apply to kids, if contraception is secretly added to food, etc., that would be a different story. (Possibly a combination of “amusing the most, and gently euthanizing the rest”.)
Not to put words in the author’s mouth, but when they said “We go gently...”, I don’t think they meant “go” as in become extinct, at least not any time soon. I took that to mean “go” into obscurity and stagnation instead of keeping on advancing technologically until we’re building Dyson spheres and colonizing other planets and all the science fiction stuff that most people believe humanity is going to do eventually. In that scenario, we would keep living on aimlessly for many millenia until some asteroid or other cosmic event took us out, because we had never advanced enough to be able to handle that or have colonies as a backup.
I agree with you that we’re unlikely to stop reproducing just because many humans get addicted to watching/interacting with content fed to us by a perfect algorithm for most of our waking hours. Raising a family seems to be one of those things that brings intrinsic meaning and pleasure to many people, so I believe you’d see more of it, not less—most of the reasons people are choosing not to have kids today are because they don’t have enough time or money in today’s economy and work environment, and in this scenario all those problems are solved. This scenario makes the assumption that the AI-fueled content machine would be so addictive that basically all humans would forsake all other pursuits and live like the people in WALL-E. I don’t think that’s necessarily true, and if it isn’t, we might see a population explosion requiring our AI-enabled oligarchic overlords to take control measures to keep it manageable.
Far from humanity going extinct, I think one possible catastrophe in the future, if AI advances roughly along these lines, is a Malthusian scenario where the population grows way beyond current levels thanks to AI optimizing the distribution of resources to make that possible, but becoming so dependent on complex AI logistics to provide everyone’s needs that any slight hiccup in the distribution network can quickly cause a famine that kills millions.
This scenario seems to allow enough room for AI alignment and humans still being in the driver’s seat on big picture issues that it wouldn’t decide to let us go extinct intentionally. We can hope.
I don’t disagree with you that this probably wouldn’t lead to extinction. That said, I’d expect birth rates to crater. The average teen already spends nearly 5 hours a day on current social media, and there’s every reason to expect AI social media that can generate something close to the most addictive video possible to be far more effective. Add in AI “boyfriends”/”girlfriends” that are far more attractive, supportive, etc. than any human, and many of the biological impulses that drive people to make families are diverted away from making real relationships and families. Only people with fairly strong desires for making real families and luddites would have much chance of overcoming the strong influences against it.
My confidence here is decent, but not amazing. Assuming the scenario happens roughly as described otherwise, I’d give roughly a 70% chance of a massive (as in far worse than currently predicted) population crash happening, but not extinction on (direct) account of it. Obviously, this is heavily contingent upon how addictive AI social media could be, which could be less or far more than described.
As cesspool said, this isn’t really meant to mean outright extinction, but I would expect a(n even more massive than already predicted) population collapse in this scenario. The line was basically talking about the end of human endeavor (which, to be fair, is somewhat intertwined with a population collapse in multiple ways). At a guess, I’d expect people having kids for religious/philosophical/moral reasons to become much rarer in this scenario, but not entirely go away.