“Assuming AGI is achieved soon, we may finally stand on the threshold of a sufficient combination of intelligence (via AI), matter (via asteroid mining) and energy from various clean sources to provide for effectively unlimited material abundance, which will in future enable the finer values of life as people generally cease having to worry about the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy.
“By 2040, we will have finally begun to establish a model society founded on consensually-derived principles including the best available evidence, reliance upon the scientific method for policy and law, systems of sustainable technological abundance and new institutions appropriate to such a new, ever-evolving model of society.
“I expect that by 2040 humans will live in multiple ‘geographies’ due to the expected arrival in the 2030s of fully immersive VR with zero latency (enabled in part through AI). This will greatly reduce human needs for matter and energy by enabling instantly and upon demand most of the experiences that people once had to enable through use of physical possessions.
Contrary to misplaced fears of an AI apocalypse, and assuming that AGI is achieved by 2040 as our AI expert advisors expect, if it is self-aware then such an AGI is far more likely to protect humans from existential mistakes such as nuclear war than to initiate such out of self-interest. Further, of its own volition, it will take very little interest in the physical universe, due to the fact that self-aware AGI will experience time as essentially frozen on a physical level.
“AI will greatly simplify human life. By running robots that perform those activities we humans do not wish to perform, AI will eliminate most ‘work,’ and those who wish to perform activities will invest themselves in alternative actions they desire (e.g., gardening, public service).
“Contrary to misplaced fears of an AI apocalypse, and assuming that AGI is achieved by 2040 as our AI expert advisors expect, if it is self-aware then such an AGI is far more likely to protect humans from existential mistakes such as nuclear war than to initiate such out of self-interest. Further, of its own volition, it will take very little interest in the physical universe, due to the fact that self-aware AGI will experience time as essentially frozen on a physical level. (My essay, ‘An AI Epiphany,’ explains the logic supporting this assertion.)
“We will lose the basis for our present ‘scarcity game,’ which has arguably been the core element of human existence through almost all of history. The implementation of a new and continuing ‘abundance game’ will require a fundamental rethinking of everything from our very first principles a megaproject for which AGI will be uniquely well-suited because it will lack our biological imperatives toward what Dan Arielly calls ‘predictable irrationality.’”
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.”