AI Hype Is Real

[spartanliving4u]

Let's assume that AI hype is real and it does end up transforming every aspect of our life in the next 5-10 years.

How do you envision life to be? Which facet of our lives will be very different? Where will it have the most impact?

[code51]

End of the internet as we know it. Everything will be fake. Maybe-human-zones will be created (again... by startups) but nobody will be sure whether there is actually a human on the other end.

Face-to-face experiences and carefully planned group activities will start to earn a "premium" status. People will be divided: the ones who prefer the virtual and the ones who prefer the physical. The ones losing the physical contact in the process will experience more and more mental health problems over the years.

The biggest impact will be on the election process and democracy as we know it.

[jruohonen]

I also fear about the destiny of the open Internet. The AI garbage and fake-everything will flood the zone, as it is already doing. This flooding may also have some positive consequences such as the death of social media.

Though, writing from Europe, I believe governments will take a more active role in creating these "human-zones" with real identity verification. For instance, in the EU we already have the eID project in the making:

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/wikis/display/D...

Moreover, I am still highly skeptical about the labor market impacts upon white-collar jobs. The alleged productivity increases will mostly mean automating boring menial tasks in these jobs.

Impacts upon democracy and politics are also my biggest concerns at the moment.

[jackstraw14]

Why do you feel like this is scarier than the internet 30 years ago? Your comment could be written in 1993, describing how everything will change because of the internet. I'm not saying AI won't impact democracy (obviously the internet has) but I'm having a hard time relating to people who seem so ready to declare the end of civilization as we know it. Humans are resilient, and we've made it through the industrial and tech revolutions to create entities more powerful than ourselves, so what is different now?

[spartanliving4u]

Not to mention legal ramifications - evidence such as audio, video will be brought into question

[p-e-w]

> but nobody will be sure whether there is actually a human on the other end

If that is true, why would it matter?

[code51]

Living with doubt is not easy on our minds, that's why. Today we know there's a portion of fake content there already but we're not living with the doubt that %100 is fake.

[rswskg]

I'm off to see if there are any studies on this.

[abnercoimbre]

In the era of AI's relentless advance, a profound yearning for human touch and handcrafted marvels emerges. For example we have our Handmade conference [0]: a celebration of software built with heart and soul. (Feeling poetic tonight.)

Practically speaking, as GPT-4 took the world by storm, our ticket sales skyrocketed in response. Of course this is just a correlation but this year we're on track for a record-breaking sellout. So we could predict people craving ownership and authenticity (whatever that means to them) free from the invisible hand of AI.

[0] https://handmadecities.com

[p-e-w]

I think any talk about which parts of our lives will be affected is underselling the enormity of the issue.

Life as we know it will end. Humanity as we know it will end. It could be because of an AGI takeover, or because of a few individuals harnessing extremely powerful AIs for their own ends, but there is no path forward that doesn't end with most of humanity either dead or enslaved.

Sure, you will likely see industries collapse, huge numbers of people losing their livelihood etc., along the way. But that's nothing compared to what will come shortly afterwards. A humanity where most humans are effectively worthless is unthinkable, yet that is exactly what's going to happen.

[sjohn91]

productivity will explode. check this one: https://chabotix.com/. a chatbot for your website, works with your documents, no coding required but just a simple text file upload. all powered with chatGPT.

i think all software players will be impacted dramatically. if anyone can produce product much faster, it will be even more challenging to stay afloat when you have only software products.

[isaacfrond]

Anybody who interacts with writing or images in the course of his work will be impacted. Which is to pretty much everybody. Maybe hairdressers are exempt.

[snadal]

Actually hairdressers will probably be impacted also because people would like to see how they will look like after their haircut :)

[iExploder]

my barber already charges more per hour than me, this hits hard :D