“While we will continue to see significant advances from AI in many ways, the raw power of simulating intelligent behavior through LLMs will plateau as a result of model collapse and diminishing returns. AI will not suddenly give us always-perfect answers to questions nor be able to tell us how to do anything, much less be able to execute on such tasks perfectly.
Where we can see the biggest potential impacts of AI is in industrial efficiency, where the U.S. stands poised to reclaim a position of world leadership at the intersection of many evolutionary forces.
“In this way, it is much like search engines. They were magical when they first appeared and seemed like an opened door to a fount of infinite knowledge and possibility; today, they are a fundamental part of everyday life, but they have severe limitations and, like their sources of information, cannot be unquestioningly relied upon. The same is true of AI.
“Where we can see the biggest potential impacts of AI is in industrial efficiency, where the U.S. stands poised to reclaim a position of world leadership at the intersection of many evolutionary forces – a ‘de-risking’ with China, massive domestic investments under the Biden administration and America’s current leadership in AI technology. AI offers the most benefits in the most mundane of circumstances, though the hype of simulating human interaction gets all the news headlines. We risk, unfortunately, an equally large consequence of AI in the negative: the further undermining of the post-World War II world order.
“We already have questions around the efficacy of the United Nations on the heels of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Russia holds a permanent seat on the UN Security Council while committing such grave violations of security. What will happen with China and Taiwan between now and 2040? And will American economic restrictions on China, motivated in part by the desire for AI dominance, exacerbate tensions within the West, even as the U.S. and Europe struggle to identify a shared approach to technology governance to present to the developing world as an alternative to authoritarian control?
“Time will tell on these questions. But rather than AI being at the heart of them or driving their answers, AI – like search engines, like the internet, like computers themselves – will simply be one piece of the puzzle, like its historical precedents. A large piece, but a piece nevertheless.”
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”