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JavaMochaNeuroCam t1_iy3aaa1 wrote

You guys are thinking bottom-up. To predict AI/robotic's impact you have to think from the perspective of market drivers, costs and competition. Companies that compete will do whatever it takes to stay competitive. Manufacturing in particular, is obviously going to transition fastest. Also, in service businesses, there are micro tasks that get automated. These market drivers push automation and AI development. Investors can drive some, but in the end, there has to be a market. So, automation spreads along the paths of least resistance, or greatest return on investment. Automated vehicles, home automation, customer services.

So, there will be points along the curve of the AI's intelligence and robotic dexterity, cost and efficiency, at which you can say, what skills can this do more efficiently than humans, given total cost of ownership (build, train, maintain, power). Obviously, with above-human intelligence AND robots that can do any task a human can, it's game over.

The question is, along that curve there will be increasing disruption, and gradual but accelerating macroeconomic effects. Companies will evolve or die. People will adapt or end up homeless. The homeless will probably be given welfare. Drugs and crime will run rampant. There will be an industry to contain the growing homeless. It will probably involve robotic police. In the end, the upper layer will merge with the AI and the billions of displaced will just be contained. In 100 years they will die off mostly. The AI will build gleaming cities and expand to interstellar space.

That is, if we don't have AI wars. If we do, AI+robotics accelerates outside market forces. The dominant AI will know how to exterminate us ... and it will.

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