This is the full version of AI: Dystopia or Utopia? (13,150 words). A summarized version (3,150 words) can be found here.
1. Introduction
For four decades, I've devoted myself to and studied disruptive innovation. I started with the microprocessor, a seismic shift that gave rise to two key developments: the distributed computing pioneered by Sun Microsystems, of which I was a co-founder, and the personal computer. Then, in 1996, the browser emerged, marking another epochal shift. I was part of the team that invested in Netscape, the first important browser, and incubated Juniper, laying the groundwork for the fundamental TCP/IP backbone of the internet—a technology that many major telecommunications companies had cavalierly dismissed. This was the dawn of the internet revolution, during which we made strategic investments in nascent giants like Amazon and Google. The profound impact of the internet revolution speaks for itself. Then, in 2007, came the iPhone, and with it, the mobile platform era. Each new platform allowed large applications innovation and an explosion of new ideas.
There is a point at which a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind. It is likely that AI is different in kind from the previous technological phase changes. The microprocessor, the internet, and the mobile phone were tools for the human brain to leverage and made much of our lives mostly better. But they did not multiply the human brain itself. AI, by contrast, amplifies and multiplies the human brain much as the advent of steam engines and motors amplified muscle power.
Prior to these engines, we relied on passive devices such as levers and pulleys, and animals. We consumed food for energy and expended it in labor. The invention of engines allowed us to convert energy not from our bodies but from oil, steam, and coal, thereby allowing humans to use external non-biologic energy to augment output. This transition improved the human condition in such transformative ways.
AI stands as the intellectual parallel to these engines, albeit likely more impactful. Its capacity to multiply expertise, thinking ability, and knowledge, means over the next decade we can significantly transcend human brain capacity. We’re on the cusp of a near-infinite expansion of brain power that can serve humanity.
Artificial intelligence promises a future of unparalleled abundance. The belief in the boundless potential of what could be animates not just techno-optimists like myself but entrepreneurs who know that the "possible" doesn't simply manifest—it must be brought into existence. Imagine a post-scarcity economy, similar to the vision in Star Trek, where technology eliminates material limitations and goods are produced so efficiently that scarcity becomes obsolete. Most jobs went away, be they in healthcare, law, engineering, warehousing, retail, restaurants, etc. And yet, we’d still have enough abundance to pay citizens via some redistribution effort so they can cover a minimum standard of living materially higher than today’s minimum. Everything would be substantially cheaper and yet everyone would have enough income for their needs. If people work, it will be because they choose to, not because they need to and “work” will be a pursuit of passions not a requirement to provide for one’s family. In this post-utopian world, the economic impact of this future would eclipse that of previous technological revolutions, such as the microprocessor or the internet.
The dream of AI's potential is vast, but the journey toward it is complex, as our transition to a post-scarcity society may be painful in the short term for those displaced. Mitigation of those sequelae is possible and must come from well-reasoned policy. The next 0-10 years, 10-25 years and 25-50 year time frames will each be radically different from each other. The pace of change will be hard to predict or anticipate with respect to technology capability far exceeding human intelligence, and the rate of societal penetration by area.
Adding to some current confusion on whether the future is dystopic or utopic is the current AI hype cycle, which with its concomitant failures, distorts views. Most AI ventures will end in financial loss. In aggregate more money will be made than lost, but by a small concentration of world-changing companies. What excites me most isn't the magnitude of AI’s profits but its potential to indelibly rechart the course of the world and reinvent societal infrastructure for the better.
2. Dystopian view of AI
Pessimists and doomers paint a dystopian future in two parts - economic and social. For each of their concerns, I address why these fears are mostly unfounded, likely myopic, alarmist, and actually harmful. They are also addressable through societal choice. The doomers’ dystopia also represents errant risk/reward arithmetic in my view. I understand acutely that AI is not without its risks. AI risks are real but manageable. In the present debate, the doomers are focusing on the small “bad sentient AI” risk, and not the most obvious one – losing the AI race to nefarious “nation states,” or other bad actors, making AI dangerous for the west. Ironically, those who fear AI and its capacity to erode democracy and manipulate societies should be most fearful of this risk! It is why we can’t lose to China, and why we must step up and use AI for the benefit of all humanity. China is the fastest way the doomers’ nightmares come true. Are you ready to trust Xi and his Putin-like appendages for the equitable distribution of one of the world’s most powerful technologies? That would be dystopian.
A. Job loss and economic inequality
In an economic dystopia, wealth gets increasingly concentrated at the top while both intellectual and physical work gets devalued, widespread job loss and deflation destroys the economy and purchasing power, and inequalities are exacerbated. AI could create a world where a small elite thrives while the rest face economic instability, especially in a democracy that drifts without strong policy. But smart interventions—like income redistribution, minimum living standards (perhaps UBI?), and strategic legislation over the next 25 years, driven by democracy—can prevent this. I believe these interventions are achievable because Western capitalism is by permission of democracy and its voters. If we correctly handle this phase shift, AI will generate more than enough wealth to go around, and everyone will be better off than in a world without it. Over the next 5-20y, it is possible that AI will create new jobs we cannot currently conceive of. But over the long haul, AI will eliminate most “jobs” insofar as a job is defined as a trade or profession one must pursue to support their needs and lifestyle.
Factor in an aging global population and a shrinking pool of young workers, and AI becomes essential. With the right policies, we could smooth the transition and even usher in a 3-day workweek. If GDP growth jumps from 2% to 5%, we'll have the abundance to create "transition funds," much like the oil funds that have fueled prosperity in certain states and countries like Norway. I expand on some of these economic possibilities in section 4.
B. Social control and manipulation
Socially, the naysayers see a world in which AI undermines humanity, starting with pervasive surveillance. But these outcomes aren't inevitable. Legislation, implemented country by country, will shape how AI integrates into our lives. In democratic societies, these will be collective choices. I, for one, am willing to trade some freedoms for a society with less crime, but that doesn't mean embracing totalitarianism. (And let's not forget, with AI, the reasons for crime might even diminish.) A reasonable balance can be achieved, where we benefit from AI's advancements without succumbing to the dystopian visions alarmists predict if we are willing to put constraints on AI’s legal uses.
Additional fears include AI being used to manipulate public opinion, control information, and influence elections through targeted propaganda or deepfake technology. In fact, we are already seeing Russian interference in the 2024 US election and it can get much worse with more powerful AI. This could undermine democracy and create a society where truth is difficult to discern. However, the fears around manipulation and control rely on the assumption there would be a single, despotic AI overlord, which is far-fetched. More likely, we'll see a diversity of AIs, each serving different interests and thereby preventing the consolidation of power and influence.
C. Loss of human agency and ethical considerations in AI systems
Concerns about AI making critical decisions in areas like healthcare, justice, and governance are valid, especially given the hidden biases in current systems. But these biases originate from humans, and AI offers a chance to recognize and correct them. For example, human physicians tend to do more surgeries if they are paid for surgery and it is hard to argue they are unbiased. AI will be the only way unbiased care can be provided. AI will surface the biases and then correct for them. This will create a world of abundance, and more equitable access, as I further detail below.
In my view, humans will retain the power to revoke AI's decision-making privileges, ensuring that AI remains an "agency" guided by human consensus, not an unchecked force. The specter of a sentient, malevolent AI is a risk, but it's one we can mitigate.
As AI reshapes work and ultimately makes decisions in healthcare, justice, and governance, potentially overriding human intellect and judgment, we face an opportunity to redefine human purpose, as well as improve current outcomes. Today, from age six, we're programmed in school to get an education to secure a job, which ends up orienting much of our sense of self. But in 25 years, without this pressing imperative, we might teach children to explore, imagine, discover, and experiment. Liberating people from survival jobs could redefine what it means to be human, increasing our "humanness" and expanding the diversity of our goals. Broader education may be needed, not to train for a job, but to pursue intellectual pursuits for their own merits, instead of a “purpose” like a job.
Ultimately, "humanness" will be defined by our freedom to pursue these motivations, freed from the chains of survival servitude. More than anything, I hope in a world with less competition for resources, more humans will be driven by internal motivation and less by external pressures. Society and individuals will have the ability to choose which technology they personally want to leverage, and where they want to spend time. If someone likes making personal decisions without any AI leverage, then they will of course be free to go on without any copilots. Nothing would be forced upon us. AI will not be an overlord but rather a tool available to fulfill our needs and requests. In a smaller way, the Amish in the US forsake technology by choice. There may be thousands of such communities.
Pursuant to the above, there are fears that reliance on AI might lead to the erosion of human ethical and moral standards. If AI systems are programmed to prioritize efficiency over ethical considerations, it could result in decisions that are harmful or unjust. But these are societal choices, made by humans, not machines. If we get it wrong, the blame will be ours to bear.
By that same token, when pessimists worry about ethical and moral degradation as machines lack the nuanced understanding of human values, ethics, and emotions, I'd suggest this is a much greater danger with humans in charge. Alignment matters, but the same could be said for humans orchestrating a group and trying to make a decision. First getting on the same page matters. Either AI is powerful enough to understand and follow our direction or it isn’t. We can't have it both ways. Fully independent AI may pose other larger risks addressed below but “smart enough AI” not understanding our directions is not one of them.
D. Loss of creativity and critical thinking
With regard to fears of an erosion of human creativity and critical thinking, I think that is a narrow-minded view of an AI world. Critics fear cultural homogenization due to AI algorithms feeding users a narrow range of echo-chamber ideas. They worry that over-reliance on AI could diminish human creativity, problem-solving skills, and critical thinking, as people become more dependent on machines to make decisions for them.
But I see a world in which someone like myself – endowed with zero musical talent – can create a personalized song to deliver the message from the speech I wrote to my daughter for her wedding. True story. It meant a lot to me. We can expand our creativity beyond our current confines and capabilities with AI. And great artists, painters or performers will be able to leverage these tools even more. I don’t see a loss of humanness but rather an augmentation and expansion of it, given that AI systems may be even better (or different) at creative tasks, may soon display emotion and empathy, and in so doing can complement our own.
E. AI autonomy, existential risk, and supremacy & China
In the most extreme view, doomers warn AI could become uncontrollable and render humans extinct. The risk of a "sentient, independent, malevolent AI" is probably the most significant threat AI poses, and it's one we must take seriously. While the idea of a "hard take-off"—where AI rapidly surpasses human control—is real and demands vigilance, it's important to weigh this risk against the immense benefits AI offers humanity, or against the risks AI creates in the hands of adversarial nation states.
Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, both widely recognized as “godfathers of AI” echo these concerns. Alongside Hinton, Bengio has sounded the alarm on the catastrophic risks of AI misused by ill-intentioned actors or organizations. The potential for AI to self-replicate, protect its survival, build systems to be impervious to human intervention, and/or exploit vulnerabilities in digital infrastructure could not only destabilize democracies but also subvert all of humankind. This concern is not only about the AI itself but about the accessibility of such powerful tools becoming widespread and falling into the hands of those with malicious intent. Bengio advocates for international cooperation to regulate AI development, prevent its misuse, and develop countermeasures to safeguard humanity. I would argue that international treaties are pointless here given the use of AI is not verifiable (unlike with bio or nuclear weapons where their use is obvious). Max Tegmark similarly focuses heavily on the "control problem," but even this is being addressed by advancements in AI safety research. Efforts like OpenAI’s work on reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF) and the increasing broad research focus on AI interpretability are pushing the field toward systems that are more transparent and controllable. Paul Christiano, the head of AI Safety at the US AI Safety Institute, notes that alignment problems, while real, are not unsolvable and are gradually being tackled through both technical solutions and more rigorous oversight frameworks. These include systems that allow humans to supervise AI learning processes more closely, ensuring that the goals AI optimizes for remain aligned with human values.
Moreover, the analogy to nuclear weapons or pandemics as existential risks is somewhat misplaced. Unlike AI, nuclear weapons and pandemics have immediate and clear destructive potential. AI, on the other hand, is a tool that can be designed and guided to serve specific functions. Stuart Russell, author of "Human Compatible," has emphasized that with careful planning, AI can be controlled to ensure it does not pose a threat. He proposes that AI should be built with uncertainty in its objectives, ensuring that it constantly seeks human approval for its decisions. This approach, often referred to as 'value alignment,' makes it improbable for AI to go rogue in the ways Tegmark, Bengio, and Hinton have suggested. But it is not automatic or guaranteed so more research funding is warranted. But slowing down AI development with regulation is too large a risk to take in our battle with unfriendly nation states. Falling behind is by far the largest danger that scares me.
Researchers like Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta, have pointed out that current AI systems lack the foundational mechanisms required for self-awareness or autonomy. To them, fears of sentient AI taking over are vastly overstated. AI, as we know it, remains entirely reliant on human-generated inputs and goals, without the capacity for independent motivation or the agency to set its own objectives. LeCun argues that while AI is advancing rapidly, the idea of AI developing sentience is still far beyond our current technological capabilities. (But guess what is well within a near term possibility? China gaining ground in this AI race and leveraging the brute force of its regime to leverage it for domination over the globe’s political and socio economic values. More on this below.) My synthesis of this doomsday fear mongering is that the cat is already out of the bag and we have a forced choice between sitting on our hands and making ourselves completely vulnerable to bad actors’ use of AI, or charging forward developing a technology that can fight its malicious counterparts.
Further, it is likely that we'll have multiple AIs, making it unlikely that all would turn against humanity simultaneously, even in a worst-case scenario. Most likely, the growing emphasis on AI explainability will enhance safety by aligning AI's goals with human values. Within the next decade, I believe we'll move beyond the scare-mongering around "black box systems" with no controllability. However, solving this problem requires a laser focus on AI safety and ethics.
Investing heavily in AI safety is crucial, and a substantial portion of university research should focus on this area. The federal government should invest more in safety research and detection of AI. Features like “off switches” should be required after appropriate research and testing. It's also important to remember that humanity faces many existential risks—pandemics, asteroid impacts, nuclear war, to name a few. AI is just one risk in a broader context, and we need to consider the trade-offs between these risks and the potential benefits AI can bring. In my view, the risk of falling behind in AI technology to China and other adversaries is a far greater risk than sentient AI risk. Slowing down the development of AI could be disastrous for democracies and the greatest risk we could possibly take.
The nation that emerges as the leader in technology, particularly in AI, in the coming two decades, will be in the commanding position for the global distribution of technology, economic benefits and influence, and thus — values. By far, AI will be the most valuable technology not only in cyber warfare or national defense-killer robot -types of application, but in things like free doctors for the planet, and free tutors. The country that wins this AI race and related races like fusion will project so much economic power, hence will project political power and likely anoint the world's political system. What influences Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc is at stake. Democratic values are at stake in this technology battle, and so we should do whatever we can to win this battle and beat China. Their view of utopia is likely different.
I suspect China may take Tiananmen square tactics to enforce what the CCP thinks is right for their society over a 25 year period. By contrast, we will have a political process. If democratic values are to win globally we must approach AI cautiously but not at the expense of losing the AI race. It is why I believe China’s 14th five-year plan, overseen by President Xi, specifically declares their intent to win in AI and 5G wireless. The former will allow for economic power while the latter allows China to surveil all citizens in 100+ countries by controlling their telecommunications networks and TikTok. Technological leadership is an existential priority worthy of wartime mobilization. Imagine Xi’s bots surreptitiously individually influencing Western voters with private conversations, free of “alignment constraints” that worry cohorts of American academics and philosophers. To address these risks, inadvertent and advertent, we must substantially increase our research and investment in safety technologies, but not aggressively regulate AI.
If one is to believe that China will peak in the next decade because of demographics, slowing growth, and a large debt burden, we must believe it will get more desperate to win and be more dangerous in its waning years — the opposite of a Thucydides Trap. This is why we must not be at their mercy while we debate hypothetical scenarios and slow down progress with misprioritized regulation.
We may have to worry about sentient AI destroying humanity but the risk of an asteroid hitting earth or a pandemic also exists but the risk of China destroying our system is significantly larger in my opinion. In the present debate, the doomers are focusing on the small risks, and not the most obvious one – losing the AI race to bad actors makes AI dangerous for the west. Ironically, those who fear AI and its capacity to erode democracy and manipulate societies should be most fearful of this risk!
F. Corporations vs countries
In an AI world, tech CEOs controlling these technologies could hold unprecedented sway over global employment, economic structures, and even the distribution of wealth. Their platforms might become the primary mediators of work, education, and social interaction, potentially surpassing the role of traditional governments in many aspects of daily life. Critics argue that these executives wield influence that rivals or surpasses that of many nation-states. They point to the ability of tech platforms to shape public discourse, influence elections, and even impact geopolitics as evidence of this outsized power. However, this concern raises an interesting question, and I go back to my previous framework of a forced choice between an ascendant and maximalist China vs our freer society and economy: why should we be more comfortable with the global influence of unelected leaders like Xi Jinping than with that of tech CEOs? No tech CEO is likely to own anywhere near controlling interests or even a material interest and they will have shareholders and boards to report to. While both wield immense power without direct democratic accountability, there's a crucial difference in their incentive structures. Tech CEOs, for all their flaws, ultimately rely on the continued support and engagement of their users, customers, boards and shareholders. They must, to some degree, respond to market forces and public opinion to maintain their positions – even if they, themselves, are ill-intentioned characters. In contrast, authoritarian leaders like Xi disregards public sentiment, using the state apparatus to suppress dissent and maintain control. This dynamic suggests that while the power of tech CEOs is certainly concerning and worthy of scrutiny, it may be preferable to unchecked authoritarian power in terms of responsiveness to global stakeholders and having economic vs political/personal incentives.
3. Utopian view of AI
Part of my motivation to pen this piece is to dispel the dystopian vision of an AI-first world. First and foremost, it is a cognitively lazy vision – easy to fall into and lacking all imagination: large-scale job losses, the rich getting richer, the devaluation of intellectual expertise as well as physical work, and the loss of human creativity all in service of our AI overlords. We in the West have a very distorted view of what dystopia is. The majority of the authors of this dystopia have the luxury of pontificating from their ivory towers, already insulated from the drudgery and existential pressures facing the majority of Americans, today, let alone the billions of similar people worldwide who face risks of death everyday and make many very short term trade offs at huge personal costs. I’m referring to the 40% of Americans who can’t cover an unexpected $400 expense, or the 100 million Americans who lack proper primary healthcare, or the half a million citizens who every year file bankruptcy due to exorbitant medical expenses.
AI can provide near free AI tutors to every child on the planet and near free AI physician expertise to everyone on the planet. Virtually every kind of expertise will be near free from oncologists to structural engineers, software engineers to product designers and chip designers and scientists all fall into this camp. Microprocessors made most electronics and computing near free if judged by the computational power in a cell phone. AI will make similar cost reductions apply to many more areas than microprocessors ever could by making all expertise near free, most labor very cheap through bipedal and other robots, materials from metals to drugs, much cheaper through better science discovery and resource discovery and much more. It will also help control plasma in fusion reactors and self flying aircraft, self-driving cars and public transit making all substantially more affordable and accessible by all. AI will provide personal, intelligent assistants to every individual, offering help with daily tasks, personalized fitness and nutrition, and even executive support. AI-powered tools will generate illustrations, icons, logos, and art, transforming how creatives work. We will see AI copilot physicians, AI automating radiology workflows and diagnostics, while AI financial analysts automate tasks like accounts receivable management and financial modeling. AI will assist with drafting contracts, creating video games, and powering fully autonomous fleets. AI copilots will assist engineers in everything from formal verification to thermal management in chips, civil engineering, and interior design. From self-driving MRIs to personalized audiobooks, we are limited only by what entrepreneurs can imagine. AI promises to democratize even how we build enterprises. Programming, for example, will no longer be siloed to the halls of computer science, because we will soon be able to program in natural language vs complex programming languages, creating nearly a billion programmers.
A. Increased efficiency and productivity
I estimate that over the next 25 years, possibly 80% of 80% of all jobs, can be done by an AI, be it primary care doctors, psychiatrists, sales people, oncologists, farm workers or assembly line workers, structural engineers, chip designers, you name it. And mostly, AI will do the job better and more consistently! The collaboration between human and AI is likely to start in the form of the human knowledge worker overseeing 4-5 AI “interns,” enabling the human to double their productivity. For the next decade we should expect this to be the dominant mode of increasing the productivity of human knowledge workers by 2-5X with full human oversight in most critical work. We already see the early days of AI taking over mundane, repetitive workflows, allowing humans to focus on more creative, strategic, and fulfilling work. Eventually we will decide as humans, what jobs we assign to humans and what we choose to do ourselves. We also see copilots synthesizing terabytes of data better than a human possibly can. Anywhere that expertise is tied to human outcomes, AI can and will outperform humans, and at near-free prices. Take an oncologist treating a patient for breast cancer. It’s very unlikely that they remember the last 5,000 papers on a certain breast cancer. Note that even though a task or job can be done by an AI, does not mean all societies will allow it to be done by an AI. These politico-economic-societal decisions will be made country by country and likely not by technologists. Further, it is worth musing: will all labor – farm work to oncologists & engineers – be valued equally by society where the expertise sits in an AI? Will AI be the great equalizer?
And what about the natural resources, physical inputs like steel, copper, lithium and cement, required to underpin much of this software and hardware? As we witness China's strategic moves to dominate resource-rich regions like Africa and South America, particularly in controlling critical mineral supply lines, the imperative to innovate becomes clear. AI will transform how we discover and utilize natural resources such as lithium, cobalt, and copper, such that our resource discovery capabilities outpace consumption. The current challenge is not a lack of resources, but a limitation in our capacity to find them – a barrier AI is poised to help break. Further, AI could help optimize the use of resources (natural, raw, and otherwise), reducing waste and improving the efficiency of industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, and energy. This could lead to a more sustainable economy and better stewardship of the planet.
B. Improved quality of life
Our physical lives will also be upended for the better. Bipedal robots have the capacity to transform every vertical from housekeeping to eldercare to factorie assembly lines & farms. Few are preparing for how this will radically change GDP, productivity, and human happiness and free people of the servitude of these assignments we call jobs. These robots will create enough value to support the people they replace. In 25 years there could be a billion bipedal robots (in 10 years, a million) doing a wide range of tasks including fine manipulation. We could free humans from the slavery of the bottom 50% of really undesirable jobs like assembly line & farm workers. This could be a larger industry than the auto industry. But it will be the humans’ responsibility to not take a lazy and indulgent approach to life.
AI could also make the physical distance between us smaller. We could replace the majority of cars in most cities with AI-driven, autonomous, personal rapid transit systems and last mile self-driving cars, increasing the passenger capacity of existing streets by 10X. This will dramatically shrink the auto industry and reduce nominal GDP while making local, personal transit far more convenient, faster and cheaper.
It is not just our physical lives that will be transformed. Soon, most consumer access to the internet could be agents acting on behalf of consumers and empowering them to efficiently manage daily tasks and fend off marketers and bots. Tens of billions of agents representing consumers running 24x7 wouldn’t surprise me and is on my current wish list. Assuming the vectors of social benefit prevail, this could be a great equalizer for consumers against the well-oiled marketing machines that attempt to co-opt the human psyche to increase consumerism and sell them stuff or bias their thinking. They might have the smartest AIs protecting their interests.
I envision a personal AI agent for every individual, designed to act in their best interest—shielding them from manipulative marketing and the brain hacks of today where marketers can make consumers buy or click on things they wouldn’t otherwise. Likely, we will have powerful, privacy preserving, personalized AI that represents and protects the consumer like a consumer protection agency. Think of it as "Spy vs. Spy" in the digital age, where AI empowers us as consumers and citizens against corporate AIs with incentives to manipulate us.
C. Enhanced healthcare and longevity
AI could revolutionize healthcare by enabling personalized medicine, where treatments are tailored to an individual’s genetic makeup, lifestyle, and environment. This could lead to better health outcomes and longer, healthier lives. AI could be used to detect diseases at an early stage, often before symptoms appear, allowing for more effective and less invasive treatments. This could significantly reduce the burden of chronic diseases and improve overall public health.
Quality, consistency, and accessibility in services like healthcare will improve as they become nearly free. Not only will very broad primary care, including mental health care and chronic disease care, become table stakes worldwide, but AI will augment current biotechnology to create precision medicines that are actually effective, minimize off-target effects, and scalable/cheap enough for the globe. More specialized physicians - such as oncologists - will have access to terabytes worth of the latest research and data, making it more effective and up-to-date than a human counterpart. While there will likely be a need for human involvement – and AI will know when to call in the human doctor based on patient preference – a 24x7 AI oncologist will provide far greater touchpoints, and be able to make decisions on diagnosis and clinical course with far more information synthesized and outcomes modeled, leaving human doctors free to engage in more fulfilling activities. The same rings true for other specialties and all manner of chronic care and diagnostic testing.
The AI dystopia fear-mongering is not not coming from the patients who struggle to be seen by a grossly inefficient healthcare system. 150 million Americans live in federally designated mental health professional shortage areas and over half of all adults with mental illness cannot receive treatment. We should be asking those 28 million individuals – not a few fear-mongering elitist academics – whether they’d welcome the following news: The first large language model AI approved in the UK are now doing 40% of NHS mental health clinics doing intake for behavioral health and they are showing superior outcomes. In time this trend will lead to near free mental health care. This is the utopian side of AI – the long awaited technological revolution that can solve so much of the pain caused by our present-day systems.
My speculation about Reinventing Societal Infrastructure with technology, allowing all 7.9 billion people on the planet to live like the top 10% richest humans, seems much more achievable now with the unveiling of AI’s ever expanding capabilities. Expanding basic primary care, chronic care, and specialized care (i.e., cardiology, oncology, musculoskeletal, etc.) is essential to improving the health of those living in emerging markets and preventing disease. Near-free 24x7 doctors, accessible by every child in the world would be impossible if we were to continue relying on humans for healthcare. Indeed, the current debate has painfully failed to focus on the most salient consequence of AI: those who stand to be most impacted by this AI revolution are the bottom half of the planet – 4 billion people – who struggle everyday to survive.
Twenty years ago, The Lancet found that in the 42 nations that account for 90% of global child mortality, 63% of child deaths could be prevented through more effective primary care, which amounts to 6 million lives per year. AI could make this near-free. In western nations we take for granted the preventability of diseases like diarrhea, pneumonia, measles, malaria, and perinatal HIV/AIDS transmission. There is no realistic path for enough human PCPs to reach and have high touch-point encounters with every child in the less privileged parts of the world. Should we charge forward and embrace AI as a society, I imagine that if I were to visit a village in my birth country of India, the quality of my care would be greater than if I saw a local PCP at Stanford, since the village in India will have adopted AI faster, given potential incumbent friction stateside. Should we worry about the remote possibility of sentient AI killing 6 million people or the certainty of six million children’s deaths every year, year after year?
D. Education and knowledge expansion
AI could create personalized learning experiences that adapt to each student’s needs, pace, gaps in knowledge, and interests, leading to more effective education and higher levels of achievement for all learners. AI-powered platforms could make high-quality education accessible to people around the world, regardless of geographic location or economic status. This could democratize knowledge and empower individuals globally. Public school district zoning and the zip code into which you were born will be far less influential in one’s outcomes in life. Coupled with my 25+ years of vision for a society freed from the “need to work,” AI tutors and human mentors will allow kids the freedom to explore and be themselves. That is closer to freedom than the servitude of today’s jobs kids aspire to.
Globally, AI is our only chance at near-free tutors, available 24x7 across innumerable subjects, for every child on the planet. It would be hard to overstate the impact this could have in unlocking opportunity and conferring agency, self-efficacy, passion, hope, motivation, and gender equity to those who otherwise lack the resources and live in parts of the world that lack the infrastructure for such broad, consistent, and accessible education.
E. Environmental sustainability
AI could play a crucial role in addressing climate change by optimizing energy usage, reducing emissions, and developing new technologies for renewable energy. AI could also aid in environmental monitoring and conservation efforts. AI could lead to smarter, more efficient agricultural practices that increase food production while reducing environmental impact, helping to feed the growing global population sustainably. But this is linear thinking. AI scientists could enable us to have much more innovative approaches to this defining problem we as humans have created.
Powering this AI-utopia will require complementary technologies such as fusion for limitless, cheap power generation. And with the right political climate, we could replace all coal & natural gas plants by 2050. My bet is on fusion boilers to retrofit and replace coal and natural gas boilers rather than building whole new fusion or nuclear plants. There are additionally promising efforts using geothermal, solar and advanced battery systems for clean, dispatchable electric power. Multiple vectors are driving down the environmental cost of compute. Significant improvements are also being made in areas like algorithmic efficiency and hardware, allowing AI systems to achieve far more while consuming much less power. New techniques and the integration of web search functions are helping AI scale more effectively without drastically increasing energy consumption. This push for optimized compute not only supports the growing energy demands of AI but also ensures that this technology can expand sustainably without straining global infrastructure.
F. Enhanced human capabilities (and creativity); new experiences
AI could augment human capabilities, allowing people to tackle complex problems that are beyond the reach of current human intelligence alone. This could lead to breakthroughs in science (i.e., climate breakthroughs), technology, and other fields.
AI could serve as a creative partner, assisting artists, designers, and innovators in exploring new ideas and pushing the boundaries of what is possible in art, science, and technology. Consumer services will become hyper-personalized, enabling individuals to be the artist, composer, producer, writer, and consumer all at once. Music, for example, may become interactive like games, with new formats likely to be discovered and enabled. Such media is already beginning to pour in, in some cases generating a greater proportion of hits than human-made counterparts.
Whereas many artistic aspirations were previously closed off to those who either lacked the talent, were concerned about a secure financial future, or simply didn’t have the resources to make a movie or compose a song, those impediments will gradually cease to exist. This doesn’t mean that celebrity entertainers will disappear, but that AI-generated art will offer complexity and deep textures that belie the music’s artificial origin. Some will hate this and others will love it. The same is true of musical genres today from classical to heavy metal.
New kinds of jobs will emerge and new creativity will be unleashed. Before the film camera, there was no job for a film producer. Entire industries have erupted. Entertainment has become more popular, and extreme sports have turned into income-generating professions for many, like the X Games! Snowboarding, for example, which was not a profession before, now is. Platforms like Etsy and eBay have facilitated global artisans and entrepreneurs, while new technology will likely enable an entirely new world of professions. Inkitt is enabling a bevy of new creative writers, and platforms like Splash people with an outlet for their creativity, allowing them to be more expressive about their music tastes and individuality.
G. Ethical decision-making and governance
AI could help create more just and equitable societies by ensuring fair decision-making processes, reducing biases, and promoting transparency in governance. AI could assist in the development of evidence-based policies by analyzing vast amounts of data, leading to more effective and informed governance.
We could have lawyers for every citizen 24x7, that will amplify our professionals 10-fold, expanding accessibility & affordability. There will be plentiful AI judges to resolve conflicts expeditiously, providing justice without the deeply entrenched human biases. Education, legal, and financial advice will no longer be reserved for the upper crust of society. In fact, these will be essential and near-free government services, just as much as roads and national defense are today.
H. Human flourishing and well-being
In a utopian vision, AI could help shift societal focus from economic growth to human well-being and fulfillment. Imagine a world where passions emerge naturally, as people are given the opportunity early in life to pursue what truly excites them.
I discussed a child’s freedom before but let me elaborate. If we start teaching children at age six that they don’t need to excel in school merely to secure a job, but rather to explore what ignites their passion, it would create a vastly different formative experience for their developing brains compared to initiating this conversation at age 40. Professions that are not typically associated with financial security—except for the top 1 or 0.1%—such as visual arts, music, sports, writing, etc., could soon be satisfying and achievable for anybody who wants to pursue them, unconstrained by today’s needs to make a living and provide for one’s family.
This shift could redefine what it means to be human—no longer confined by the drudgery of an assembly line job that defines one's entire existence. As I suggested back in 2000, we might need to rethink our very definition of being human. After all, is it truly fulfilling to spend 30 years mounting a single type of wheel onto cars on an assembly line? Such jobs, like farm work in 100°F heat, represent a form of servitude, not human flourishing.
But this isn't just about blue-collar work; white-collar jobs might be the first to go. Take investment banking, for instance—is it gratifying to spend 16 hours a day hacking away at an Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint deck, repeating the same rote tasks?
Life won’t become less meaningful once we eradicate undesirable, toil-intensive jobs. Quite the opposite—life will become more meaningful as the need to work 40 hours per week could disappear within a few decades for those countries that adapt to these technologies. Keynes, in 1920, postulated a 15-hour workweek! Imagine what could be possible—I imagine we could be at a 3 day workweek in 10-20 years, providing the 20% of work we may need or want, with massively increased productivity. I, for one, would be happy to work on my garden one day a week and spend the rest of my time learning, even at age 69. Finally, I could have enough time for skiing, hiking, or indulging my many interests.
It is precisely this opportunity to redefine the human experience that subverts the pessimists’ argument that the ‘humanness’ in our lives will disappear. We can build a world that bestows much more agency, self-efficacy, and hope to every human being by first removing the financial constraints and considerations that saddle so many with the need for basics for themselves and their families. AI, by eliminating the burdens of basic survival, offers us the chance to build a world where people are free to pursue what truly matters to them. The main fields of human endeavor may become culture, arts, sciences, creativity, philosophy, experimentation, exploration, competition of every sort and adventure. The real question is whether or not everyone will be able to participate.
I. Potential obstacles to our utopia can be overcome
Of course, much can stand in the way of turning these predictions into a utopian reality. Incumbent resistance from established organizations could impede progress (e.g., Screen Actors Guild). Politicians might exploit public fears for personal or populist gains, further stoking resistance. Additionally, technical failures or delays, potentially exacerbated by supply chain issues or global conflicts, could set back development. The financial market also poses a risk; economic downturns or poor conditions could lead to promising ideas falling into a funding gap, described as a 'chasm of a bridge too far.'
Anti-tech sentiment, including opposition from naysayers and those who distrust technology, could hinder widespread adoption of beneficial developments. This sentiment may align with the concerns of modern-day Luddites, who might co-opt the discourse, alongside DEI advocates, potentially diverting the focus from technology's potential benefits. The situation may be further complicated by a few AI-related negative outcomes receiving disproportionate media attention, leading to a tainted public perception of AI. 'Left field' events, those unpredictable and out of the ordinary, are common and could unexpectedly disrupt progress. Lastly, the movement may suffer if key instigators and advocates fail to emerge or effectively champion the cause.
But, I stand by my conviction that an AI-driven utopia is not just an optimistic possibility, but a very achievable probability with the right societal choices and technological advancements. The key is to harness AI's potential responsibly and ensure its benefits are distributed equitably across society. As the contours of the AI landscape continue to evolve, it appears likely that there won’t be one dominant corporation purveying AI and gatekeeping its benefits.
The fear of AI power consolidating into the hands of a few is unlikely given how accessible and user-friendly AI tools have become. Unlike industries where expertise and capital create high barriers to entry, AI development is becoming more democratized, allowing individuals and small teams to build, train, and deploy AI systems with minimal resources. Today, many cloud services provide the infrastructure needed to train AI models at scale without requiring specialized hardware or huge financial investment. And new research from small players is focusing on radically different approaches to developing AI than today's LLMs. The path of optimal development is not yet clear to me. Likely, many of these will be complementary to each other.
In addition, low-code and no-code and natural language platforms are making it easier than ever for people without deep technical expertise to create and deploy AI solutions. From chatbots to machine learning models, these platforms abstract much of the complexity, making it possible for an average person to develop AI applications in a fraction of the time it would have taken just a few years ago. AI-based APIs allow anyone with a basic understanding of programming to integrate powerful AI into their apps, tools, and workflows with minimal effort.
As the tools and resources for AI development continue to become more accessible, the idea of a single company or entity monopolizing AI becomes less feasible. Instead, we are heading towards a future where AI development is open to everyone—from individual entrepreneurs to local businesses—allowing innovation to flourish from the ground up. This decentralized model of innovation will help ensure that AI remains a tool for the many, not the few.
4. New economics in an AI world
In the next five years, life may not feel dramatically different—changes will be incremental and familiar. However, between 10 and 20 years from now, we will witness an acceleration of dramatic transformations reshaping society. I define utopia as an abundance of goods, services, freedoms, and a creative explosion, and it lies perhaps 25 years ahead. While it's still on the horizon, this era of unprecedented prosperity is visible today, though the rate of transformation is not. And the intermediate disruptions to societal structure are hard to predict.
A. Capitalism and democracy in the AI era
Western capitalism is by permission of democracy and in many cases, optimizes for economic efficiency and distribution of outputs based on individual contributions. Capitalism has achieved economic growth but in the age of AI we should not focus on efficiency alone, but add the objective of reduced income disparity as an equally important outcome, given the role of equality in human happiness.
Capitalism may need to evolve in the face of AI-driven changes. The diminishing need for economic efficiency gives us room to prioritize empathetic capitalism and economic equality alongside efficiency. Disparity beyond a certain point will lead to social unrest, so we must enact policy with this in mind and share the abundance AI creates more equally, despite the job losses. I grew up a fan of some inequality (read “incentives to work harder”) provided there were great opportunities for social mobility. Further, capitalism today has strayed to some new form whereby demand generation efforts in certain sectors (read advertising and equivalents) exceed economic efficiency benefits, making us want things we did not know we wanted. This is not additive to societal well-being. We’re at a point where an improvement to our current capitalistic system would be net positive. Unironically, those societies which choose to embrace this technology (and not all will equally) to the fullest will have a much greater capacity to practice empathetic capitalism, by dint of the abundance AI will unlock for them.
Let’s not slow down the hand of the market or technological progress but rather realize human labor may be devalued in many instances, putting downward pressure on wages of both lower-skilled workers and higher-skilled workers. With less need for human labor, expertise, and judgment, labor will be devalued relative to capital and even more so relative to ideas and machine learning technology. History has shown us, from the advent of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of electricity, that technological innovation causes massive disruptions. For example, agriculture led to the rise of cities and civilizations, and the Industrial Revolution, while displacing jobs, ultimately improved living standards and created new forms of employment. The Luddites, resisting the mechanization of their craft, were the technophobes of the 19th century—much like today’s critics who resist AI. But just as history proved the Luddites wrong, today’s technophobes cannot stop the forward march of progress.
In an era of abundance and increasing income disparity (as I speculated in 2014 in my essay on AI), we may need this new version of capitalism that places greater prioritization on ameliorating the less desirable side effects of capitalism. The genie isn’t going back into the bottle. Technology is coming. The best we can do is be clear-eyed about that and manage the transition with the least collateral (short-term) damage, just as past societies learned to navigate through disruptions caused by technological shocks.
B. Wage compression and job disruptions alongside increased productivity
AI's leveling of skill differences could compress wages both individually and across various job functions, and value creation may shift to creativity, innovation, capital or AI ownership, potentially leading to different economic inequalities. While productivity gains have historically led to higher wages and increased consumer spending by increasing demand for the higher productivity resource, be they engineers, salespeople, or farm workers, such may not be the case with AI technologies given their capacity to disintermediate humans from what I predict to be 80% of the work in 80% of jobs in the next 25 years. There may be a discontinuity in productivity.
We cannot simply extrapolate past economic history, which preaches that in each technology revolution, new job opportunities have outpaced the losses. As someone said, “when the train of history hits a curve, the intellectuals fall off.” I contend that this time could be different given that now, the basic drivers of job creation will change with a technology that does not only augment human capabilities, but also may surpass them altogether, leaving education and upskilling – a historical avenue for retraining and relevance – somewhat impotent. We have seen large transitions before but never this quickly, making adjustment a much harder problem. In 1900, 40+% of the U.S. labor force was employed in agriculture, making it the largest employment sector. By 1970, it was 4%. But that took three generations. This AI cycle will be much faster. And hence more disruptive and uncomfortable.
Artificial intelligence will likely lead to seismic changes to the workforce as the tsunami of increasing AI capabilities comes at us, eliminating many professions and requiring a societal rethink of how people spend their time. Professions have been eliminated before but never this fast. Changes could hit some people in the economy more seriously than others, especially in the next decade or two, even if society as a whole improves. This will likely be a hard sell for the most affected people. The 10-25 year transition could be very messy. But that is certainly no reason to act from a place of fear and ultimately fail to reap the benefits of a world freed from the constraints of work and with greater access to the resources currently enjoyed by so few. It will be time to seriously consider ways of taking care of those affected.
AI forms of expertise (i.e., AI doctors, lawyers, accountants, financiers, administrators, teachers) can serve orders of magnitude more expert capacity where needed, increasing not only access but also quality, while leading to human job loss for those previously in such positions. AI-powered robotics can and likely will do the same for manual labor-intensive jobs, maybe 5-10 years behind AI software. And AI tools will increase output and productivity, often as interns to humans in critical functions, such that fewer humans are necessary, up to the point, likely in the next decade, before they autonomously take over the job functions.
So let’s continue this thought experiment around wage compression and job disruption using the aggregate cost of physician salaries in the U.S. healthcare system as a starting point. It is north of $300 billion dollars, likely closer to $400 billion (take 1mn doctors each making $300-400k). Predicting the fate of the $300–$400 billion spent annually on U.S. physician salaries hinges on supply and demand elasticities in healthcare. Suppose medical expertise costs drop by 90% due to AI automation of medical expertise and administrative workflows. Will consumption increase tenfold to keep the ~$350B spend constant? Hard to know. People won't start breaking more legs just because orthopedic care is cheaper, but Jevons Paradox could apply such that consumption of preventive care, chronic care, mental healthcare, elective procedures, etc and any other medical vertical where demand currently outstrips supply, increases once barriers to access fall.
AI will hyper personalize and possibly commodify high quality entertainment and media, and any art form will vie for the same 24 hours of user attention each day. Diversity and quality of media will likely expand dramatically; will consumer spending also increase? In other areas like accounting even if services become cheaper through automation, a company won't require ten times more audits. The demand is bounded by regulatory needs, not cost.
Each sector will find its own equilibrium between supply, demand, and elasticity, making precise predictions difficult without a nuanced, sector-specific analysis for which, today, we have insufficient data. In the fullness of time, the new AI economy will find an equilibrium once demand hits the asymptote of total consumption and time in each sector. This applies across all verticals. Keep in mind our humanness may prefer “human centered or human made work product” over technically superior AI produced work. We already often prefer “hand made”.
Productivity will favor increasing average incomes but job displacement will do the reverse even as the goods and services produced increases dramatically. Net - net, will income disparity increase? Much of this will depend upon the policy approach of our elected officials and their willingness to tackle the severe redistribution problem pure capitalism may create. Universal basic income may be the best equalizer. It should be our goal to ensure that median income rises along with average income.
C. Deflation and the need for new economic measures
Increased productivity with fewer inputs (i.e., lower or near zero labor costs – think near zero computation costs and much cheaper bipedal and other robots) and increased competition (technical expertise more equally available to many) can trigger deflation, along with the described job loss. These new dynamics can increase hiring to leverage the lower effective manpower cost in spending-limited companies for some time but eventually supply will exceed demand in most sectors. Beyond labor and expertise, as we use AI for resource discovery, material supplies become abundant, costs for physical inputs may also decrease, adding to this deflationary pressure. Of course, there are additional nuances such as consumer behavior, business investment decisions, and central bank responses. However, given AI’s likeliness to touch every vertical of GDP, albeit in different time frames, it would be hard to overstate the impact it could have on our economy as a whole, and I doubt monetary policy will be as strong a lever as it historically has been in this new age. Monetary policy has worked for and has been refined to effect incremental changes to the economy. Marginal economic changes driving marginal behavior changes may not apply any longer: the response to a wind is different than to a typhoon, to a wave different than to a tsunami.
Historically, ‘deflation’ has a negative valence because chronically falling prices typically lead to decreased profitability for companies and stagnant or even shrinking economic growth. AI-led deflationary growth by contrast will likely be concomitant with increased consumption of goods and services (i.e., effectively increased consumer spending power) for all the reasons outlined above if mechanisms like universal basic income (UBI) are adopted. In the extreme case, AI replaces most jobs, UBI supplies income (spending quota?), and most goods and services decline in price. Can universal basic income become a source of increasing equality in society? Physical inputs like steel, cement and copper may be the only real constraints but AI led discovery of new plentiful resources will likely significantly increase supply of these physical inputs. Is it necessarily bad if the number of goods and services consumed by citizens increases dramatically yet spending decreases? Our vocabulary today equates GDP growth and corporate profits to prosperity; this is a bug of our current lexicon. GDP measures over the next decades will be a distortion of prosperity in a deflationary, AI world whereby GDP could conceivably decrease but overall wellbeing and consumption of goods and services increases.
From experience we know that the cost of labor or the cost of capital can be effectively altered by simple changes in rules, regulations, laws, and tax strategies like capital gains tax or MLPs; many of these biases have been engineered into today’s seemingly neutral capitalist economy. More and significant manipulation will be needed to achieve reasonable income disparity goals. Income or social mobility is an even harder goal to engineer into society’s “rules” though AI could be the great equalizer of knowledge and expertise. I suspect the situation will become even more complex as traditional economic arguments of labor versus capital are upended by a new factor many economists don't adequately credit—the economy of ideas driven by entrepreneurial energy and knowledge. This last factor may become a more important driver of the economy than either labor or capital. Some factors of production, like physical resources (lithium or copper or steel) may take much longer to adjust to the changes than others.
D. Policy choices
This new quantum jump in technology capabilities, left to its own natural adjustment mechanisms we use currently in our capitalist system, will likely lead to increasing income disparity and abundance at the same time. It is possible that this time the technology evolution really is different, because for the first time, it is not about productivity enhancement but rather exceeding human intelligence and capability. There is a discontinuity in the switch from productivity enhancement of humans to substantial replacement. If this scenario comes to fruition, we will need to make structural changes in our social and political systems to optimize for fairness or whatever we determine are our society’s goals. Democratic processes are ideal for this decision making, especially since not everyone will be needed to pursue the same goals.
We face choices: accelerate, slow down, or moderate the adoption of disruptive technologies, and decide whether to compensate those displaced, for instance, through economic support. The dynamics of change can be painful for those who are disrupted, and to effectively embrace AI and all its positives, keeping those who are displaced at the center of national policy’s efforts will be key. Economic policy will need to include not just economic growth tuning, but also bear in mind the levers and mitigators of disparity and social mobility. As an unapologetic capitalist and technology optimist, I advocate for the continued rapid support and deployment of AI systems. We should not slow down technological progress but rather adapt to the changes it brings, including the potential devaluation of human labor and expertise. These changes pose significant challenges, but they also offer an opportunity to create in the 25+ year windows a more empathetic society and a post-resource-constrained world. We must be thoughtful about the society we live in and the future we create, and craft policy much more empathetically. This is a luxury that has been unaffordable in the past but may now be ours to use.
Structural changes at the national (and international) level will probably be necessary over the long term in order to solve the larger side effects of technology exceeding human capability. Economic policy will need to include not just economic growth tuning but also be driven by disparity and social mobility biases. In a global context where countries take different approaches to adapting AI, dramatic shifts in relative economic wellbeing and power are likely.
As AI reduces the need for human labor, UBI could become crucial, with governments playing a key role in regulating AI’s impact and ensuring equitable wealth distribution.
Given the massive productivity gains on the horizon, and a potential for annual GDP growth to increase from 2 to potentially 4-6% (or much higher) over the next 50 years, per capita GDP could hit ~1M (assuming 5% annual growth for 50 years). A deflationary enough economy makes current nominal dollars go much further and I suspect current measures of GDP will be poor measures of economic well being.
In this world, I believe there will be sufficient resources and abundance to afford UBI. Today, UBI might seem impractical due to economic constraints today, and indeed, ignoring spending constraints has led to disasters in countries like Argentina and Venezuela. But those constraints will gradually become less so. The abundance and wealth in this future society will create a generosity and greater willingness to redistribute, as this would create a better/safer society for all.
A word of caution is necessary in recommending any specific solutions or premature action at a national scale that may be drastic or irreversible because much of the dynamics of this change and timing of technology breakthroughs is highly unpredictable. Debate and discussion are definitely called for. Point solutions for those hurt by the increasing income disparity need to be found. We must watch changes closely and make continued small policy changes this next decade. Even with strong AI technology advancement, the actual impact and adoption may be substantially slower given deliberate adoption lags and natural human resistance to change.
E. Imagining a consumer utopia
An interesting parallel is China whose entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 indeed created deflationary pressures on the United States in the years that followed. This was largely due to several factors related to trade liberalization and increased competition from Chinese exports. The movement of labor overseas has resulted in a loss of tens of millions of stateside manufacturing jobs, yet little policy was centered around upskilling or taking care of those whose livelihoods were upended. With AI, we have the opportunity to free ourselves from this low-cost labor in countries like China by repatriating manufacturing stateside, without increasing the cost of goods, while increasing some AI assisted manufacturing insourcing to counter the decline in AI displaced jobs. China’s deflationary influence came with reduced consumer spending power in the US as jobs moved overseas. AI-led deflationary growth by contrast will likely be concomitant with increased consumption of goods and services (i.e., effectively increased consumer spending power) for all the reasons outlined above. The dynamics of this change will be hard to predict.
I can imagine a consumer utopia in 25+ years, where we’re not supply constrained in most areas and deflation is actually a positive tailwind for access and more equal consumption. Imagine a world in which housing, energy, healthcare, food, and transportation is all delivered or at your door, for near-free, by machines; few jobs in those fields remain. What would be the key characteristics of that world, and what would it be like to live in it? For starters, it’s a consumer utopia. Everyone enjoys a standard of living that kings and popes could have only dreamed of. I suspect the cost of living at a certain standard in our future utopian society will further decline, thus buying substantially more for the individual who today earns $40,000 annually than someone making $400,000 (as a guestimate) annually can buy. Happily, technology will be even more deflationary for goods and services than outsourcing to China has been over the last decade or two. But my real hope would be with the abundance of goods and services our citizens start to focus on what gives them more happiness instead of more consumption and consumption becomes less of a status symbol.
5. We can build the future we want
The future that happens will be the future to which we as society decide to guide this powerful tool. That will be a series of technology enabled policy choices and not technology choices, and will vary by country. Some will take advantage of it and some will not. What should be individual person level vs societal choice? Since our basic needs are taken care of, all human time, labor, energy, ambition, and goals reorient to the intangibles: the big questions, the deep needs. Human nature expresses itself fully, for the first time in history. Without the constraints of physical needs, we will be whoever we want to be. The increase in GDP will usher us into a ‘post-scarcity’ society where our basic relationship with work must be redefined. And traditional GDP measures will start to become an increasingly inaccurate poor measure of human progress. And there will be great path dependence based on the policy and societal choices we make.
Most importantly though, the grand ambition of imparting the rich lifestyle enjoyed by only 700 million (~10%) people to all 7-8 billion global citizens, is finally within arm’s reach. It would be patently impossible to scale the energy, resources, healthcare, transportation, enterprise, and professional services 10x without AI. That is the necessary force multiplier and the only tool capable of scaling what the most fortunate currently enjoy. AI is necessary, but it is not sufficient. Policy that creates fertile conditions for the concomitant social, political, and economic transitions is required along with energy and other innovations AI will likely enable.
AI is a powerful tool which, like any previous powerful technology tool like nuclear or biotechnology, can be used for good or bad. It is imperative that we choose carefully and use it to construct that “possible" world guided by societal choices. That we not forsake the benefits out of fear of the unknown.
I am a technology possibilist, a techno-optimist, but for technology used with care and caring. Like we say “no wine before its time”, there is need for regulation but no regulation before its time. Reflecting on my words in a New York Times interview in 2000, we will need to redefine what it means to be human. This new definition should focus not on the need for work or productivity but on passions, imagination, and relationships, allowing for individual interpretations of humanity.