[awgneo]

"It’s not my view that AI is sufficient to realize utopia, though it may be necessary." Necessary when 93 out of 100 people on the planet currently lack a college education? I feel like the technical elite, in their submission to capitalism, are giving up on the prospects of humanity.

[sapphireblue]

I don't have a college degree (that doesn't mean I don't have lots of technical experience though, including some machine learning at amateur level) and I'm not from the 1st world, but I disagree with you on that matter. I don't see how education will help us reach a truly utopian future. It looks like the developed world has pretty much hit the ceiling of what's possible for society controlled by (educated) humans. While I find 1st world an overall nice place, it is in no way an utopia: the day-to-day experience for average person isn't that good neither long- nor short- term. If that's the best we can do with education, we should probably take another path instead of repeating the same mistakes done by the developed world

It looks like the main problem of modern world is complexity. The infrastructure (physical, social, IT) has become too complex for mere humans to control. Humans are slow, learn slowly, have limited attention spans, limited capability of understanding complex nonlinear systems (e.g. markets, social dynamics). IMHO the world is currently in the state of severe deficit of attention. There is too much problems on all levels, yet humanity as a whole has only so much attention to apply to these problems, so only the absolutely critical issues are solved (e.g. 2008 financial crisis or flint water scandal) while everything else is neglected until it becomes critical.

Machine Intelligence (both Machine Learning and more general AIs, e.g. agents based on unsupervised+reinforcement learning) could give intelligent attention to every big and tiny problem there is: in politics, society, infrastructure, healthcare, etc. on Instead of having to deal with a constant stream of crises AI systems could prevent them from occurring before the catastrophical event took place, just like with preventive medicine. That and automated manufacturing & distribution could give way to a really pleasant life experience.

Of course it sounds too easy to be true. Looks like the biggest obstacle to realizing this variant of utopian future is politics. Human primate is naturally hierarchical, and these instincts influence our society & way of life profoundly. Modern society looks like a pyramid with wealthy & powerful on the top, a docile (but shrinking) middle class in the middle and controlled poor at the base. The people on top and in the middle are quite well off, and they are afraid of losing power (even to machines, even if there will be a mathematical proof that everyone will be better off after we delegate decision making to AI agents).

It looks to me that from the perspective of the rich & powerful there really is no need in automation/AI: why do they need robots when they are used to hiring poor people to serve them? Why do they need automation when with the power of money they can order thousands of people to manufacture any product/experience for them? That's the status quo that will have to be disrupted to have AI/robot-based automated utopia for everyone, IMHO.

[visarga]

> why do they need robots when they are used to hiring poor people to serve them?

It's not going to matter what they need. The technology advances with a rhythm of its own. It has done so for hundreds of years, predictably. Not even big wars were able to put a dent in its pace. Just like Google replaced libraries as our source of information, Napster affected the music industry and social networks affected news, there's going to be an AI transition and it will happen no matter what. It's important to keep access to AI open and not place its power just in the hands of a few.

It will be the continuation of the mobile phone era. Mobile phones with search engines and social networks empowered billions of people, they are their main communication device, some don't even have a TV or laptop, but they still have a phone. All people got to have phones, and all our modern phones are amazing compared to the best phones from a decade ago. What technology has given to everyone not even money could buy a mere 10 years ago. But on the other hand, the phone empowered surveillance and the big brother.

The AIs will amplify this effect even more. They will empower people to a higher degree than phones did, but they will make people easy targets for manipulation. They will allow an extremely intimate knowledge about a person and direct access to influence him/her, to the technologists who control the AI.