[cfcosta]

Well, it's a spectrum to me. Glasses are already humans and machines merging together, and I feel that people in the 1500s would think the singularity had already happened to us, given how smartphones are available everywhere.

If I had to choose an event, though, I think it would be the first time that human intelligence is enhanced by AI in some way (imagine offloading numerical computations on your mind). When that happens, we will have lots of questions to answer, like: what happens when rich people are not only richer, but also fundamentally smarter and more efficient?

[simonh]

We already have calculators and spreadsheets for enhanced mathematical ability, and rich people have had assistants and advisers to enhance their knowledge and help them work more efficiently.

The interesting thing about AI and machine learning is it's actually becoming available to everyone very democratically. We all have access to Siri and Google Assistant because the best way to extract value is through massive scale. Developing a billion dollar AI and then only letting one person benefit from access to it is absurdly inefficient, partly because access to more people and more data and interactive usage it can learn from at massive scale is actually necessary to train the AI. Keeping it private also cripples it.

I know what you mean, you're thinking without any external mechanical interface like keyboards and such, but those things don't matter by themselves. A direct brain interface might provide an incremental advantage in latency, but we've had incremental improvements for ages. Unless it provides some sort of sudden multi-orders of magnitude advantage it's really just more of the same.

[cfcosta]

You've made some fair points, but there's an underlying assumption: that we are only going to be able to do what we are doing today. Of course, my example is not that good, but imagine things like increased spatial sensing, instant data analysis, better (supervised) sleep, bigger muscle and organ efficiency.

Are those in your opinion still more of the same?

[simonh]

Pretty much, yes. That just sounds like better sensors or information presentation, faster computers, medical advances and maybe some genetic engineering. We've been doing all of that stuff for decades.

The way I see it brain interfaces aren't necessarily a huge game changer by themselves, in fact it's conceivable they might actually be slower than existing interfaces but more convenient for some tasks. It's more likely to be about overcoming bottlenecks that might arise in our existing technological advance trajectory, so we don't stall out.

[Karawebnetwork]

> what happens when rich people are not only richer, but also fundamentally smarter and more efficient?

One could argue that stock trading bots are already just that. Gives someone an overview of the entire market and performs transactions in matters of miliseconds.

[alephnan]

> what happens when rich people are not only richer, but also fundamentally smarter and more efficient?

Even right now, people who are fundamentally smarter and more efficient are likely to be richer.

This is just an extension of capitalism giving an advantage to those who are already ahead.