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TupewDeZew t1_ix7rpja wrote

There is no between:

  1. It's gonna be the best thing invented by humanity

  2. It's gonna be the worst thing to ever happen to humanity

And we just want option 1 to be the answer because we want to be happy. But 2 is just as probable as option 1. Im extremely terrified.

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Artanthos t1_ix8r3s5 wrote

3: The world continues on more or less as is, but with better cell phones every year.

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World_May_Wobble t1_ixbk3mn wrote

This is also a nightmare scenario, because without radically new technologies and governance, the stuff we're up to isn't sustainable.

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Artanthos t1_ixdaqaw wrote

Implementation and incremental improvement of existing technologies have the potential to address most of the world’s problems.

Solar and wind power are already being implemented at a rapid pace.

Much of the world, and a sizable fraction of the US, have already mandated the switch to electric vehicles.

Bioreactors and vertical farms are already taking food to market.

None of this really changes life for the average person. The steak you bought is labeled Green, you charge your car instead of pumping gas, and life goes on.

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World_May_Wobble t1_ixefjwe wrote

When I say "sustainable," I don't just mean eco-friendly. For example, it's not sustainable to keep large arsenals of nuclear armed ICBMs, because even if the probability of them being used in any year is very small, the cumulative probability over long time spans approaches 1. Probably the only way to change this is a radical and global change in governance.

Then yes, there are environmental issues. We don't have a ready answer to microplastics, and they're making us infertile when we're already heading into a demographic cul-de-sac. We'll need more rare earth metals for those electrics cars. Oh, and by the way, those electric cars are still being powered by coal.

Europe is the poster child of renewables, and most of its energy still doesn't come from renewables. Its leading renewable isn't solar or wind; it's wood, and it's not even close. Wider adoption of solar and wind require better battery technology, but batter technology has improved at a notoriously linear rate. It's not going to be any time soon that we see all of Europe's energy come from renewables, and again, they're the best at this.

I'm not saying there's no progress, but that's kind of the point. We need progress to get ahead of some of the problems in our future.

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Artanthos t1_ixhtd2z wrote

>When I say "sustainable," I don't just mean eco-friendly. For example, it's not sustainable to keep large arsenals of nuclear armed ICBMs, because even if the probability of them being used in any year is very small, the cumulative probability over long time spans approaches 1. Probably the only way to change this is a radical and global change in governance.

AGI and the singularity, if it happens, don't really change this.

Now adversarial countries have competing AGI's with ever more lethal weapon pointed at each other.

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DaggerShowRabs t1_ix810ie wrote

Agreed. The thing that terrifies me too is that there are so many ways it could go wrong.

It's probably easier to build an AGI than it is to build an AGI that is confirmed to be goal-aligned with humanity. If it isn't goal-aligned, you're basically rolling a pair of D20s and hoping you land on double 20s.

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nblack88 t1_ix8sinj wrote

Good thing we have to invent it. At least we're first in the initiative order, so we have a chance to roll. After that chance, that's it! Here's to hoping we avoid the TPK.

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TupewDeZew t1_ix8pilk wrote

There's also a chance that option 2 will be worse than death.........you know what im talking about......

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Desperate_Donut8582 t1_ix83y54 wrote

It definitely can be in between it could help us calculate and come up with few ideas but not make earth a utopia….. that qualifies as in between

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