AI might have transformed some major industries and careers, even without providing novel research or human level insights.
I definitely agree this will happen a lot sooner than superhuman coders. Growth of shallow reasoning ability is not enough to cure cancer and bring about the singularity, but some things will get weird. Some careers will probably vanish outright. I often describe some careers as “requiring general intelligence”, and by that I mean requiring deep thinking. For example, writing fiction or doing AI research. In a sense, when any one of these falls to AI, they all fall. Until then, it’ll only be the shallow jobs (transcription, for example) that can fall.
I should also note that while this puts my odds of 2027 Foom and Doom in the single digits or lower… that’s still an awful high figure for the end of all humanity. Flip a coin 7-9 times. If it’s head each time, then every one of us will be dead in 3 years.
I definitely agree this will happen a lot sooner than superhuman coders. Growth of shallow reasoning ability is not enough to cure cancer and bring about the singularity, but some things will get weird. Some careers will probably vanish outright. I often describe some careers as “requiring general intelligence”, and by that I mean requiring deep thinking. For example, writing fiction or doing AI research. In a sense, when any one of these falls to AI, they all fall. Until then, it’ll only be the shallow jobs (transcription, for example) that can fall.
Agreed