> the economic growth in front of us looks astonishing, and we can now imagine a world where we cure all diseases, have much more time to enjoy with our families, and can fully realize our creative potential.
I think this is extremely myopic to assume things like “have much more time to enjoy with our families” unless that time is because you’re unemployed. Every major technology over the past couple hundred years has been paired with such promises, and it’s never materialized. Only through unions did we get 8h days and weekends. Electricity, factory farming, etc has not made me work any less, even if I do different things than I would have 200 years ago.
I think it’s also odd to assume the only things preventing curing all disease is the lack of intelligence and scale. There are so many more factors that go into this, and into an already competitive landscape (biology) which is constantly evolving and changing. With every new technique innovated (eg CRISPR) and every new discovery (eg immunotherapy) proven, the directions of what’s possible changes. If AGI is thru LLMs as we know it (color me skeptical), they do not have the ability to absorb such new possibilities and change on a dime.
I could go on and on but this is just a random comment on the internet. I understand the original post is meant to achieve certain goals at a specific word length, but not diving into all of to see possibilities (including failure modes in his extraordinarily optimistic assumptions) is quite irresponsible if he is truly meant to be a leader for a bold new future.
The line you quoted caught my eye too and confused why it was in there without an explicit or implicit mention of "in ten years we'll be so productive we'll have 3-day work weeks".
I think you make a great point about LLM's being able to absorb new possibilities. I like to cite the invention of the MRI machine as an incredible innovation that took three independent discoveries over forty years to realize, not to mention commercialize. Maybe if (big if) when AGI comes it will be able to spit out dozens of inventions that are some culmination of similarly independent discoveries but I'm not going to hold my breath. We have to remember they are just extremely good regurgitation machines which, in my experience, why I've found they're nearly useless in niche programming tasks.
I think this is extremely myopic to assume things like “have much more time to enjoy with our families” unless that time is because you’re unemployed. Every major technology over the past couple hundred years has been paired with such promises, and it’s never materialized. Only through unions did we get 8h days and weekends. Electricity, factory farming, etc has not made me work any less, even if I do different things than I would have 200 years ago.
I think it’s also odd to assume the only things preventing curing all disease is the lack of intelligence and scale. There are so many more factors that go into this, and into an already competitive landscape (biology) which is constantly evolving and changing. With every new technique innovated (eg CRISPR) and every new discovery (eg immunotherapy) proven, the directions of what’s possible changes. If AGI is thru LLMs as we know it (color me skeptical), they do not have the ability to absorb such new possibilities and change on a dime.
I could go on and on but this is just a random comment on the internet. I understand the original post is meant to achieve certain goals at a specific word length, but not diving into all of to see possibilities (including failure modes in his extraordinarily optimistic assumptions) is quite irresponsible if he is truly meant to be a leader for a bold new future.