“AI timelines are very difficult to predict. My own prediction, as an expert in neuroscience, neural networks and cognitive architectures, is that we can expect to advance to having self-improving artificial general intelligence (AGI) in three to 15 years.
“The change would have to be astonishingly slow for it to come in 2040.
“I worry much less about the impact of narrow (limited) AI on society than I do about that of AGI, However, I’m going to answer this question as I would if we might assume that we won’t have real, self-aware, agentic, self-improving AGI by 2040 (as I do expect we will).
If job replacement happens slowly enough, the wealth increases from productivity may be large enough to provide a minimum basic income type of support for much of the world’s population. This should be relatively easy in the U.S., but poor countries are unlikely to benefit enough to provide this support.
“The increases to productivity and well-being due to narrow AI will be enormous, outside of the enormous exception of the impact of its displacement of workers. Narrow AI will serve as a cheap personal assistant with expertise in psychology, finance, job strategy and just about everything else. This will be enormously useful to everyone, particularly in regard to the emergence of abundant expert psychological counseling. However, narrow AI will eliminate an immense number of jobs by 2040. It is difficult for me to see how humanity will weather this challenge, since our economic models are centered on a job for most people as their source of livelihood and source of meaning.
“If this job replacement happens slowly enough, the wealth increases from productivity may be large enough to provide a minimum basic income type of support for much of the world’s population. This should be relatively easy in the U.S., but poor countries are unlikely to benefit enough to provide this support. However, with a lower fraction of their populations performing knowledge work, their economies will be relatively less affected.”
This response 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”