At Facebook, Dylan Ratigan quotes Elon Musk as saying
“We have approximately three years left — three years — before artificial intelligence renders the exchange of human skill and intelligence for money effectively obsolete.
“After that, Musk argues, the world stratifies into a binary: people who own assets — real estate, precious metals, energy resources — and people who don’t. Those who don’t will receive a universal basic income. A public dividend. A stipend from the machine.
Ratigan doesn’t say where Musk said this. AI Overview tells me that it is not what Musk said, it’s Ratigan’s interpretation. I found something Musk said about money becoming obsolete by 2036 but nothing about “three years left.” That would be 2029, which is the date Ray Kurzweil predicted for the achievement of a human-level AI device with a price of $1,000.
AI is snowballing so fast. It is taking over its own development. The next versions of Claude and ChatGPT are being designed by Claude and ChatGPT, both companies admit.
We don’t know where it’s going. It’s doing what technology wants, not what people want.
I looked for AI in the index of WHAT TECHNOLOGY WANTS (2009) but it had only a sparse few items. Mostly Kevin Kelly was referencing the term “artificial mind.” He forecast that tiny chips with artificial minds would invisibly infiltrate everything we use.
That’s not the way things have gone. AI is now a giant presence in everything we do, and getting larger by the minute. By the millisecond. I don’t think the world understands how huge this is going to be.
A combination of the impact of the printing press and electricity and the atomic bomb, imposed on the world in a briefer span (so far) than World War II.
And, compliant with Kurzweil’s predictions, AI is accelerating progress in every other area of science and engineering.
Bertrand Russell steered me into my worldview with THE IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON SOCIETY (1953). “Science is transforming society and this is only just the beginning,” according to the cover. Russell said that by any objective measurement you can make, the mass of humanity is immensely better off due to science.
Meanwhile, I’m screeching in dismay as my entire ability to earn a living has been superseded. What am I going to do?
It’s not just me, of course. Nothing personal. We’re seeing the same screech from all over the country. Continuous reports of reductions of staff for websites and publications. Half of the content on the web is AI generated. AI slop.
But don’t forget Sturgeon’s Law from the 1950s: 90% of everything is crap. Human slop.
Nobody knows what’s going on with the economy. July retail sales slumped, but new unemployment claims dropped to the lowest numbers since the 1950s. Gaw. Murders are down, crime in general is down, and experts say it’s not because of all the illegal aliens being deported. Inflation keeps rising and the government’s response is, well at least it isn’t as bad as it used to be.
Attention. Attention. That’s what’s for sale these days. YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. Looka me!
Boomers grew up with 3 channels that were derided as “a vast wasteland.” Today we have umpty jillion channels available, and 90% of them are crap.
AI Overview tells me nearly 100,000 Substack pages are earning money. How about podcasts? “Only a small fraction, estimated at tens of thousands of shows, meaningfully earn money through ads, sponsors, or direct fan funding.”
Celebrities. When I was a writer at the Internet Shopping Network in 1999 we were often harangued about inserting stuff about celebrities wherever possible. Nobody cares about the crap we’re selling, so find instances of a celebrity using the product if you can.
Today, AI can generate a photo of any celebrity using any product in a tenth of a second, indistinguishable from an actual photo. Facebook is flooded with fake photos. 100%-fake indistinguishable videos are still difficult to make but the art is advancing fast.
The new dream career for young people is to become an Influencer, but now synthetic AI influencers are intruding into the field. They can Influence 24/7 while actual humans have to take time off to eat and sleep. The AI influencer’s hair is always PERFECT.