
AI will make human obsolete in 120 years, a large survey of experts says - ghosthamlet
http://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/2017/06/13.htm
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bencollier49
I love the way that the various (bizarre) predictions are all so completely
different that the mean is almost a straight line through the middle of the
available values. A 50% chance! Haha.

Headline should have been "experts fail to agree on chances of high-level AI"

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Nav_Panel
> _A large survey of experts in artificial intelligence suggests there is a
> 50% chance of AI outperforming humans in all tasks within 45 years and of
> automating all human jobs in 120 years._

And, since the only function of humans is to perform quantifiable tasks or
have jobs, AI will thus make humans obsolete, right?

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mrfusion
But value only exists in the minds of humans. With them gone ai would be
obsolete.

~~~
Nav_Panel
Reminds me of Asimov's "The Last Question"

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quakenul
This would make a great onion headline. Very subtle. Probably also completely
unintended. Fantastic.

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zeckalpha
I don't care what the experts say. When does the AI think it will make humans
obsolete? Work estimation is most accurate when done by those doing the work.

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macawfish
Hopefully the kind of thinking that brought "experts" to this conclusion would
become obsolete.

It's eugenics with a nasty twist.

And its very ignorant of what humans are capable of. That's because these
experts have been indoctrinated into a religion that views all existence as
physical-mechanical, either resource or waste. Efficiency and highest current
value are God, all else must be replaced, its "obsolete", toss it. Its a six
creation story over and over again, in which The Creators must never be
satisfied, in which the El never must say "it is good".

I don't doubt that computational entities could dominate humans in 120 years.
There are many possible futures/ways this could play out, but its ridiculous
to say that humans would be "obsolete". Evolution doesn't happen that way.
It's not some dumb consumer capitalist marketing ploy, where new products make
old ones "obsolete".

This kind of thinking has and will continue to result in bloody conflict. Many
humans actually _wish_ to _impose_ obsolescence on humans. They believe in
their own ineptitude. This has _already happened_ in many work forces. People
are coerced into unhealthy dependence on global power systems that don't
recognize our ingenuity or creativity. As a result _we_ don't even recognize
it. Look at indigenous cultures. Deride them if you will, but their ecological
participation has often been incredibly sophisticated. Then empire comes along
and coerces them by force and reward into forgetting, into trauma and despair,
into some form of money-worship. If you're reading this, its happened to you.
We all come from this legacy. We all have ancestors that have been conquered
by exploitative cultures. We all have exploiters in our ancestry too.

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antisthenes
There's a great tale by Nasreddin, a turkish 13th century philosopher.

The tale was about him making a bet with a sultan: he would teach one of his
donkeys to talk in 20 years. If he won the bet, he would be rewarded with a
chest of gold, but if he lost, he would be beheaded.

When his wife asked him why he'd make such a frivolous bet, he replied:

In 20 years, either I will be dead, the donkey will be dead or the sultan will
be dead.

In other words: the longer the timescale of your prediction the more
meaningless it is. If you aren't even around to see the results of your
prediction or bet, then it's already meaningless.

Knowing how bad people are at making long term predictions makes it an even
more pointless debate. Why not 130 years? Or 120.005 years? Or 1000.

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mac01021
The title ("AI will make human obsolete in 120 years, a large survey of
experts says") of this HN post does not match the article headline "Future
milestones in AI predicted by experts".

Instead it is a corruption of the article's first sentence: "A large survey of
experts in artificial intelligence suggests there is a 50% chance of AI
outperforming humans in all tasks within 45 years and of automating all human
jobs in 120 years".

And since the latter means "experts have no idea if or when AI will be able to
automate all human jobs", I think this is a pretty bad choice of title.

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carsongross
Let us set aside the fact that value is subjective and the reflexive problems
that entails when discussing humans being "obsolete".

120 years is too long for any of these experts to have any skin in the game.

Let us see what they have to say about five years from now, and if they will
put some money on it.

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bmh_ca
AI will automate production.

It says nothing about consumption.

Economic activity requires both.

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PanosJee
Pascal's scam

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Spooky23
9/10 dentists prefer Crest.

