“Through 2040, AI will be an amplifier of human capabilities, directed toward various cooperative and competitive endeavors against a backdrop of conflicting values and resource constraints. For the next two decades, people will remain essentially in control and AI will not be an independent source of goals or guidance.
All aspects of human technology have already accelerated humankind into multiple existential danger zones. Structurally, people are disposed to put to maximum use whatever tools are at their disposal. The AI genie will not be contained. As a means for humans to cooperate and compete, AI will be pitted against AI at multiple scales of granularity. The result will be a complex mixture of localized benefits and global chaos.
“At stake are a number of potential tipping points in regard to environmental conditions; population and demographics; societal complexity and resilience; and various human religious, political and cultural belief systems that are shaped by both accidental and motivated information ecosystems.
“All aspects of human technology have already accelerated humankind into multiple existential danger zones. Structurally, people are disposed to put to maximum use whatever tools are at their disposal. The AI genie will not be contained. As a means for humans to cooperate and compete, AI will be pitted against AI at multiple scales of granularity. The result will be a complex mixture of localized benefits and global chaos.
“Each individual and community will have to come to terms with a world that is increasingly unstable and unpredictable. For some, AI will become ever-more-powerful instruments for acquiring resources and stuff, gaining power and exerting control. For others, AI will become pacifiers, friends, partners, scapegoats and the face of perceived or actual containment and oppression.
By 2040 … [we may] start to seriously envision a graceful handoff from a chaotic human-run world to a nearly mythical world operatively run by AI. This will become a topic of epic debate. If such a handoff were to be undertaken either deliberately or else by fiat or default before, say, 2080, it would not be a graceful one.”
“Technology always challenges ethical values rooted in ancient traditions. With AI, the dilemmas will get much worse, very fast. By 2040, we will have enough scientific understanding of mind (natural and artificial), and enough scientific understanding of the Earth as a knowledge and information system and enough experience with advanced technological infrastructure to start to seriously envision a graceful handoff from a chaotic human-run world to a nearly mythical world operatively run by AI. This will become a topic of epic debate.
“If such a handoff were to be undertaken either deliberately or else by fiat or default before, say, 2080, it would not be a graceful one.”
This essay was written in November 2023 in reply to the question: Considering likely changes due to the proliferation of AI in individuals’ lives and in social, economic and political systems, how will life have changed by 2040? This and more than 150 additional essay responses are included in the report “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence by 2040”