[quantum2022]

I personally hope AI doesn't quite deliver on its valuations, so we don't lose tons of jobs, but instead of a market crash, the money will rotate into quantum and crispr technologies (both soon to be trillion dollar+ industries). People who bet big on AI might lose out some but not be wiped out. That's best casing it though.

[grues-dinner]

What would quantum technology actually deliver?

Other than collapsing the internet when every pre-quantum algorithm is broken (nice jobs for the engineers who need to scramble to fix everything, I guess) and even more uncrackable comms for the military. Drug and chemistry discovery could improve a lot?

And to be quite honest, the prospect of a massive biotech revolution is downright scary rather than exciting to me because AI might be able to convince a teenager to shoot up a school now and then, but, say, generally-available protein synthesis capability means nutters could print their own prions.

Better healthcare technology in particular would be nice, but rather like food, the problem is that we already can provide it at a high standard to most people and choose not to.

[rurp]

> And to be quite honest, the prospect of a massive biotech revolution is downright scary rather than exciting to me because AI might be able to convince a teenager to shoot up a school now and then, but, say, generally-available protein synthesis capability means nutters could print their own prions.

Yep this type of pandora's box is scary. Our culture demonstrably has no good mechanism for dealing with these kinds of existential risks.

Humans are fortunate that nuclear weapons turned out to be very difficult and expensive to build even with the theory widely known. If they were something anyone with an internet connection could create we would probably be extinct by now. There is absolutely no guarantee that future developments will have similar restrictions.

If bio-engineering gets accessible enough that any random motivated individual can create a new super bug we're pretty much doomed. Seems like something to worry about!

[rangestransform]

Healthcare costs are a real issue especially for gerontocracies like France, and driving them down would be a massive benefit to society

[grues-dinner]

Previous biotech breakthroughs have made good progress in treating many illnesses, but making healthcare cheaper overall is not one of them, even if it makes a specific therapy cheaper.

It would be unsurprising to me if a biotech gold-rush resulted in healthcare becoming a larger proportion of GDP, even if it produced miraculous results. We'd just have to scrimp and save and take out a reverse mortgage for generic re-transcription therapy or whatever instead of chemo and nursing homes.

[teeray]

> What would quantum technology actually deliver?

We might be able to finally determine the factors of 21

[Yizahi]

Quantum had already peaked in the hype. It doesn't scale, like at all. It can't be used for abstract problems. We don't even know the optimal foundation base on which to start developing. It is now in the fusion territory. Fusion is also objectively useful with immense depth or research potential. It's just humans are too dumb for it, for now and so we will do it at scale centuries later.

Crispr would clash with the religious fundamentalists slowly coming back to power in all western countries. Potentially it will be even banned, like abortions.

[noduerme]

I like this, because I hate the idea that we should either be rooting for AI to implode and cause a crash, or for it to succeed and cause a crash (or take us into some neo-feudal society).

[ericmcer]

seriously, LLMs are cool but if this level of investment was happening around crispr, longevity and other health tech I would be 1000X more excited.

[allegorick]

"quantum" and "biotech" have been wishful thinking based promises for several years now, much like "artificial intelligence"

we need human development, not some shining new blackbox that will deliver us from all suffering

we need to stop seeking redemption and just work on the very real shortcomings of modern society... we don't even have scarcity anymore but the premise is still being upheld for the benefit of the 300 or so billionaire families...