futurism Archives - Answers With Joe

Tag: futurism

The Fermi Paradox, Cyborgs, And Artificial Intelligence – My Interview With Isaac Arthur

July 20, 2017

Isaac Arthur runs the YouTube channel Science and Futurism With Isaac Arthur, where he goes into incredibly deep dives on subjects like megastructures, future space colonies, aliens, and little things like farming black holes (like you do). Here we touch on a few of those topics and do a little shop talk about life as YouTubers.

If you enjoy this episode, check out Isaac’s channel at www.isaacarthur.net

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How To Survive Our Uncertain Future

May 31, 2017

Could online communities create underground markets and economies that hold the key to surviving the upcoming technological disruptions? Let’s discuss.

LINKS LINKS LINKS:

The interview I reference in the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWoyn…

TRANSCRIPT:

I was watching an interview the other day where they were talking about how apparently there are billionaires who are preparing for the kind of economic collapse I was talking about on a previous video.

Tech entrepreneurs who are plugged into the latest market news and know what’s happening with AI and are building bunkers and doing survivalist training to prepare for what’s coming.

Many are worried that as automation and artificial intelligence starts disrupting more and more industries and people start to suffer, that they’ll rise up all French Revolution style against the businessmen and tech leaders like themselves who made all that technology possible.

But I don’t think people will rise up against technology, that same technology makes it possible for them to watch their favorite TV show on their phone and post pictures of their food.

But I do think, and made the argument in my last video, that people will turn on each other.

Start blaming other groups of people for their misfortune.

But in the midst of this discussion, one of the people just kind-of blurted out something that really stuck with me. He said we need to build communities, not bunkers.

I think as trust in our institutions starts to fall apart, more than ever before we’ll need to rely on each other and our social circles for support.

I mean, you only need to look at the growth of Go Fund Me to see it starting to happen.

People who are squeezed by the economy may start to opt out of the system and join these community marketplaces.

Throw into the mix the rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and you have whole off-the-grid economies that function completely independent from the banking and commerce system.

A cellular society of underground communities with decentralized self-sustaining economies just doing their own thing while the world burns.

Now, if it feels like I just keep talking about this, it’s because it’s important.

Most people don’t see the big picture, they’ve just got their heads down trying to live their lives and are so caught up in the day to day that when big systemic change starts to happen around them, it looks like something else.

It looks like something conspiring against them, either the elites above them with a boot on their neck or the lower class below them trying to take what they have.

The more we can get people to understand that these changes are inevitable, that it’s a much, much bigger force at work that is completely indifferent to them and their situation, something that is beyond any human’s control, the better.

Because humanity, and humans… are two completely different things.

Just like an ant colony acts as a singular unit, an emergent super organism, that has objectives that are totally different than that of an ant.

Humanity is the emergent super organism created by the natural collective machinations of humans.

Now, the ant metaphor may sound extreme because after all, we’re humans, we’re conscious, advanced creatures, not mindless little automatons, we have free will and reason and emotions…

But there is a foundational algorithm to our decisions and behaviors that, spread out over 7 billion people, creates humanity. A completely separate entity with completely different objectives. And humanity always moves in the direction of technological progress.

Humanity is not nostalgic. Humanity just keeps moving forward. Humanity has had a lot of setbacks because people didn’t understand this and wanted to turn things back the way they used to be.

This forward progress has always and is now disrupting the world of industry and commerce, and the way that disruption affects the average person is not always positive. Or fair.

I like Tim Urban’s description of the Human Colossus, I like putting a name on it, creating a separation between our personal motivations as people and the movements of our entire species as a whole.

But the more people understand that this is the natural flow of things and adjust accordingly instead of pointing the finger at other groups of people, the less likely this whole thing is to devolve into some kind of Mad Max style apocalyptic nightmare.

There is no divide and conquer here. There is only divide and fail. Build communities. Not bunkers.

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The Dark Side Of The Singularity

May 01, 2017

Or… How To Not Be A Horse.
Automation and AI promise to usher in an era of amazing productivity and innovation. But they also threaten our very way of life.

Partial Transcript:

For hundreds, even thousands of years, the horse was humanity’s go-to form of transportation. And in 13 years, that all changed.

Right now, we are on the cusp of a technological disruption that will make the switch from horses to cars look like switching from Coke to Pepsi.

So we talk a lot on this channel about exponential growth, artificial intelligence, the singularity, and that’s a lot of fun, but there is a dark side to all this change, one that really needs to be talked about because the way we respond to it is going to significantly alter our future as a species.

The BBC released a report just a few weeks ago that said that 30% of jobs are going to go away in the next 10 years because of automation.

In the U.S., we’ve heard a lot over the last election about the proverbial coal miners and our current president specifically campaigning to bring back coal jobs.

But coal is just one of hundreds of industries that are taking advantage of employees that can work 24/7, never need a bathroom break, never sleep, never make a mistake and work twice as fast. Oh, and you don’t have to pay them.

Factories already decimated by outsourcing are now losing even more jobs to automation. And as automation becomes more sophisticated, more industries are at risk.

The transportation sector actually makes up 25% of the jobs in the United States, if you can believe that. A full quarter of the population. And autonomous cars… They’re pretty much here, guys.

Famously, the Tesla Model 3, going into production this year, will have autonomous capability, though it may not have the software available, it will have the hardware ready for it.

But less famously, there are a lot of other car companies trying to beat Tesla to market with this. Nissan has a fully self-driving prototype in development that they took a drive in on Fully Charged and it was spooky how good it was.

Cadillac is so bullish on self-driving technology, they spent millions of dollars to create a lidar map of every highway in the United States using their own proprietary system.

This way their cars won’t just rely on sensors and GPS to find their way, the Cadillac system will contain a 3D map of everything, including the roadsigns.

Google’s working on a car, Apple supposedly is working on a car, but the people who are really big on this technology are the service providers.

Uber made over 2 billion dollars last year. Imagine how much they could make if they didn’t have to pay their drivers…

Uber has been working for years on a transportation fleet of autonomous cars, and even Ford has made some intentions known of pivoting in a similar direction.

Many are predicting that cars will go from a retail industry to a service industry, with Peter Diamandis saying that in ten years, car ownership will be an outdated idea.

The fact of the matter is, you can be for automation or against it, you can agree with its use or not, but this is happening. And we need to be ready for it.

Some people are talking about a basic minimum income, a flat amount of money that everybody in a society makes, as a safety net to keep people above water. This is an interesting idea that’s even being tested in some places.

There is a coming change on a fundamental and massive level in this world. One that is filled with amazing advancements and technological wonders. The question is, will we be able to change with it?

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