Submitted by oldmanhero t3_zrsc3x in singularity
Hank Green, of all people, posted something recently about the pace of change we're seeing, and he made a point I hadn't fully considered previously, which is that, at a societal level, at least, we are already changing too fast for us (ie our institutions) to keep up.
Since then I've been thinking about the next 20 years, particularly in terms of work, and I find myself wondering more and more whether we might already be in the midst of that knee in the curve where change goes vertical.
Imagine, for example, trying to advise a child entering high school or junior high next year about what careers will still be viable when they grow up. Can you confidently choose 5 careers you think will still be available to a regular person in 10 to 20 years? I could take some guesses, but I wouldn't be confident about them.
DungeonsAndDradis t1_j14f1je wrote
I think, day to day, progress is middling. But that's just because we're actively living it.
Maybe 20 years in the future, when we look back at 2017 to 2022, we'll realize we were at the "big bang" of AI.
So right now we're getting strapped in to the AI rocket and doing the launch checklists. Any moment now (when looking back at this time, from a time in the near future) the AI rocket will launch.
And then it's all over for Human civilization as we know it. Whether that is a good "civilization is not recognizable to someone from 1980" or a bad "civilization is not recognizable to someone from 1980" is a coin toss at this point.