Two thoughts about being human during the coming AI apocalypse

One problem doesn’t compute, the other does. Why?

Human specialness

Scott Aaronson worries: The Problem of Human Specialness in the Age of AI. I don’t get it. It doesn’t compute. Are we special now? Aaronson seems to think so; we’re special because we’re the smartest. I suppose that’s true. But you know, that doesn’t compute either. Not for me.

Back in 1990 David Hays and I published “The Evolution of Cognition,” where we observed:

A game of chess between a computer program and a human master is just as profoundly silly as a race between a horse-drawn stagecoach and a train. But the silliness is hard to see at the time. At the time it seems necessary to establish a purpose for humankind by asserting that we have capacities that it does not. It is truly difficult to give up the notion that one has to add “because . . .” to the assertion “I’m important.” But the evolution of technology will eventually invalidate any claim that follows “because.” Sooner or later we will create a technology capable of doing what, heretofore, only we could.

So that’s one thing. There’s another.

What to do with our time in a world with UBI

There’s lots of talk about universal basic income (UBI) these days, a lot of it coming from Silicon Valley, where they think that machines are going to take over most of the jobs, putting people out of work. What will those people do with their time?

We’ve got a society that’s been built on the idea that one’s job is one’s primary identity and source of a sense of self-worth. In that dispensation raising a family qualifies as a woman’s job. Keeping in mind that many jobs are what David Graber has called “bullshit jobs,” and so not an adequate anchor for self-worth, what happens in a world where many people are not required to work. What will people do with their time?

In that world, how do we connect with the larger world? For that matter, given the widespread existence of those bullshit jobs, how do we do it now?

See this post from 2021: Why are we as a culture addicted to work? [Because we have forgotten how to play.]

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Let me repeat: The problem of human specialness does not compute. The problem of filling time in the absence of (nonbullshit) work does. Why?