When it comes to "humans collectively..." kind of grand scheme issues, I just can't take the risk of AI making us stupider too seriously, compared to:
- Wars and violence to resolve geopolitical problems
- The biggest trading partner of most countries is waging tariff warfare
- Climate change
- Declining birth rate in almost every country
- Healthier foods are getting more expensive despite our technology and nutrition knowledge [0]
I'm not saying there is 0 chance that AI will make people dumb, but it just doesn't seem to be such an emergency humans should collectively be worried about.
I don’t want to nitpick but the declining birthrate is almost certainly driven by us becoming smarter, not dumber. In most countries the birthrate was propped up heavily by teen pregnancy, which the internet and access to healthcare is slowly eradicating worldwide.
If we as humans can’t maintain our current population without getting high schoolers pregnant, then so be it.
I didn't say declining birth rate is a result of people being dumber.
And I also don't think higher education necessarily means smarter. I'm quite confident that in the next decade, worldwide educational attainment will keep rising with only some temporary setbacks. If making people smart is as simple as sending them to colleges we really have nothing to worry about.
But anyway neither was my point.
You've been reading too much news. There are global societal risks but they're not just whatever the popular bogeymen of hour are supposed to be. Some of your concerns might even be backwards. I doubt you've critically thought about any of these and are just regurgitating what was fed to you.
If you lived in an earlier time, you'd be worrying about the rise of homosexuality, communism, atheism, etc.
The exact same argument can be made for people who claiming AI would make us dumber:
If they lived in an earlier time, they'd be worrying about the rise of google, the internet, tv, radio... were going to make people stop using their brains. Socrates believed writing was going to make people stop memorizing stuff.
I'm not a doomsayer who thinks the world is on the edge of collapsing. But I do think the issues I listed are much more 'real' than AI making people stop thinking. (Including the birth rate one - yeah, I'm well aware that many people think it's a good thing. As someone whose mother worked at a nursing home, in a country with TFR of 0.78, I just don't agree with them. I believe people hugely underestimate the manpower needed to take care of the elderly and disabled.)
At a global level, a more reasonably sized human population is exactly what we need, and a decline in birth rate is the most ethical way to achieve that. We have to find a way to make it work, because otherwise our trajectory takes us beyond the carrying capacity for our planet.
There are three things we need to deal with the temporary population imbalance:
Older people who remain healthy continuing to work to care for their peers—-not necessarily hard physical labor, but being out in their communities helping, which is rewarding and will help them stay healthy, too.
Easy immigration for regular people so they can move to where they’re needed.
General efficiency so we’re not wasting resources. This requires both technological and lifestyle changes, even for the rich. The more efficient we can get, the less we have to reduce our overall population.
There is no sign that we're dealing the problem properly or the society and political environment is prepared for that. Similar to climate change, it might be a solvable problem but (relatively) very little effort has been made collectively.
- Older people help each other: it's obvious, but the oldest demographic is not going to be significant healthier than what we see now without a lot of medical breakthroughs. The number of new dementia cases in the US are expected to be one million in 2060 [0]. Ironically, the only way to make "older people taking care of older people" even remotely sustainable is automation of most of the caretaking, so I never get the AI doomsayer.
- Immigration: the decline of birthrate is a global phenomenon. Which means if immigration is the solution, instead of a diversified cohort, most of the newcomers will be from few countries where population grows because other countries need influx of immigration as well. In no world it won't cause alt-right rise. What we call alt-right now will look center-left the next decade.
- Future technology and lifestyle change: yes it solves everything including climate change. It's basically handwaving and saying fusion will come tomorrow so we don't need to worry about replacing petro with fission, solar and wind.
[0]: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/risk-fu...
> What we call alt-right now will look center-left the next decade.
Yes and for good reason. Where most immigrants are Muslim, you can end up with enough Muslims to change the laws and society to their ways. That includes sharia law which ironically is itself far-right and diametrically opposite to left-wing ideals.
Okay, that sounds like a reasonable plan, but this also means that we need to stop the decline at some point, and this is not currently a solved problems since that's what governments try to achieve right now. Also the decline happens in the regions were not much decline is needed and in regions were it would be needed the population is currently increasing. Also population growth was how we have dealt with technological shifts in the past, so we need a new way for that.
Immigration helps even out where populations are located. Immigrants built America.
I really don’t think we have anything to worry about not having any people left. There’s still plenty of innate drive to reproduce, both biologically and intellectually (as in, educating far more people than the number of kids you could ever have).
Well, there is immigration and there is immigration. There are people that move between similar socialized countries, directly from one high-paying job to the next. Every country wants to have them. Then there are basically refugees, that are only named immigrants, because they happen to flee through another country. They might also have had a well paying job, but they often need to learn the language, they often need to learn the economic system, the law system, the social norms, etc. This takes quite some investment, both in time and money from them and the society they migrate to. Learning these things already takes years for young people, whose only job is to do this. It's much harder for an adult, because learning complete new things is harder for adults and they also need to cover the bills. They can be the smartest person in their country, but they will still struggle. On top, they need to fight with the immigration offices, have family abroad they want to support, might intend to return to their home, instead of settling. Thus, they will be an investment first, rather then an asset. Some place the time frame for this to be 18 years. I question whether investing in children is really the worse approach. Even when it is, then it is quite immoral to let another poorer country pay the bills for their education and then import them.
> Immigrants built America.
These were masses building a new country, not integrating into an existing; they had a way lower living standard, a lot of them died. It did not go well for the existing society in America. The people forming the government were british rich aristocrats. And don't think these situations are comparable.
It’s undeniably worth investing in immigrants, including refugees. Rhetoric otherwise is just veiled racism. These people already exist. It’s our duty to take care of them as global citizens, just like it’s our duty to care for the elderly and others.
I also think you’d be surprised how little time to pay off would actually be needed. Give people a calm space and community (including their friends and family), and we will all flourish.
> It’s undeniably worth investing in immigrants, including refugees. It’s our duty to take care of them as global citizens, just like it’s our duty to care for the elderly and others.
These are different things. Yes we are required to provide the resources needed for life to refugees as well as to the elderly. That doesn't automatically mean that this is a worthy investment. What dividends do you intend to get from a bedridden old person.
> Rhetoric otherwise is just veiled racism.
No, it's not, were did a talk about race? If anything, you could accuse me of egoism, nationalism and social darwinism. Dealing with other perspectives by shouting you are bad guy(tm) won't advance anyone.
But I did not say, that any culture will perform worse than another. I did say a person robbed from his culture, law and economic system, and displaced into another will struggle. Putting on rose tinted glasses will help neither, your society, the refugee nor the refugees society.
> I also think you’d be surprised how little time to pay off would actually be needed.
Sure, that's why the societies with the refugees all outperform their neighbor and are way more peaceful.
> Give people a calm space and community (including their friends and family), and we will all flourish.
Sure, but why should this take place in your country, just because you have a self-inflicted lack of young people? That is very much egoistic and unfair, in my opinion. Providing money for education aid to developing countries and then sending ministers there to openly headhunt the well educated for your country, doesn't seem too far from colonialism and slave trade to me.
Letting people who want to immigrate do so instead of pressuring people who don’t want to have kids do so is not slavery.
If we can’t get our act together and help each other out while living within our planet’s means, what kind of life are we even offering to future generations?
> just veiled racism
Instead of using a thought-terminating insult, think about why people veil their racism, and why they have it. Different races are intrinsically different and some of those differences are harmful to society. You're probably shocked hearing this but most people are too scared to say it because the group will punish them so we end up with people like you somehow actively oblivious to reality.
Yes it could and they're also mostly just reflecting what the media riles them up with. People don't work out their concerns themselves, they copy the popular beliefs.
Nuclear war is still a risk, as are meteor strikes, but somehow they aren't in fashion at the moment. There are yet other risks that people don't want to think about or which protecting ourselves against would be very painful so we also mostly refuse to think about.