If you think AGI/superintelligence might be near, how do you deal?

February 24, 2023 10:42 AM

My inclination is to take pretty seriously the idea we’re moving pretty fast toward very very big changes from AI. Like, metaculus thinks we’re four years away from weakly general AI, and 7-18 years away from superintelligence. I’m curious if there are resources to help, I dunno, get through day-to-day life, if you take these predictions seriously, and not get too overwhelmed/anxious

I guess to me, the main challenges are:

- So much of what we do day to day is predicated on the idea that the world will more or less be around in something roughly resembling its present state in five or ten years. I’m inlined to think that even weak general AI would pretty much upend everything about how we spend our lives. How do you do day-to-day stuff in the face of this?

- At times (though not always) this brings about in me feelings of anxiety and depression. It feels like an enormous amount of uncertainty (anxiety) and it feels like in the face of so much uncertainty there’s no sense really taking any actions (depression).

I worry in part about catastrophic downsides of AI. But even the “good” version of a post-superintelligence world seem dizzying to think about. I feel all this especially as a parent: It feels hard to imagine what it means to prepare my child for the future when the future seems so unknowably different.

I’m really interested in ideas, resources, articles, etc, on how to deal with this.

I'm mostly *not* interested in reasons to believe that AGI and superintelligence aren't imminent.

posted by ManInSuit to Computers & Internet (24 answers total)

Step 1 for me in living my life despite Things I'm Reading About on the Internet has generally always been, step slowly away from as much of the internet as is humanly possible, as often as possible.

Step 2 is something that I'm told people can cultivate on purpose but which for me seems to be an outgrowth of living with long-term chronic depression, namely, the ability to just sit and live with unpleasant, uncomfortable thoughts like "I don't actually know what will happen in the future and it might be bad." It seems like most folks cultivate this ability through meditation.

Step 3 is honestly just eating and drinking and listening to loud music a lot? Real hard to get spun up about the Terror of the Day when you're absolutely shitfaced at a punk show.

Finally, no parent ever adequately prepares their kid for the future because no parent has ever been able to be all-seeing all knowing. My parents raised us to believe we could get good-paying jobs for life as long as we had a bachelors' degree, LOL, and that was just like...20 years ago. Let that one go; all children inherit a world mystifying to their elders.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:54 AM on February 24, 2023 [14 favorites]

Can you alter your media diet so you're getting less of this speculation? And it is, absolutely, speculation at this point.

Have you ever spent time on RationalWiki?
posted by sagc at 10:55 AM on February 24, 2023 [6 favorites]

Yeah just go for a walk outside in the sunshine & listen to the birds tweeting. That fixes most internet-doom situations ime.
posted by rd45 at 10:58 AM on February 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks! Wanted to add a clarifying point. I wrote

I'm mostly *not* interested in reasons to believe that AGI and superintelligence aren't imminent.

I should probably add:

I'm also mostly not interested in reasons to believe that AGI and superintelligence, if they come, won't really change things so much.

Thanks!
posted by ManInSuit at 11:09 AM on February 24, 2023

I found this short vlog by Tom Scott very relatable. It is not reassuring per se, but it does put into words the unease that I'm feeling, and that itself can be helpful.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 11:09 AM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

I know this'll sound corny, but if you have any philosophical or religious faith, this might be a good time to turn to it; comfort in the face of the unknown is pretty much what religion is -for-. You've admitted that you don't know what's coming or what to do about it, so hand that stress over to a higher power.

Myself, I'm a Discordian, so I just kinda go "Whee! Some wild stuff is gonna happen, and I'm going to do my best surf that wave when I get in it, but until then, just keep paddling and wait and see." So you dont have to be a real serious born-again Xtian or something to get a bit of a boost, but these are crazy times so maybe getting a little crazy can help you play along.

I personally view the AI uprising as something amazing that will happen, for good or bad, but it's so fascinating at the same time that I just feel lucky to be seeing it. We've popped the genie out of the bottle and gone through the looking glass, grab your security blanket of choice and let's ride this coaster!
posted by The otter lady at 11:18 AM on February 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

Hey, op, me too. I agree with other people that the future is unknown, etc, and that that’s useful for forestalling fear, but tbh the best way I get through it is just don’t think about it to the extent humanly possible. Which involves significant technological work: I hardblock twitter, LessWrong, Metacalculus, and anyone else posting about AI. I have a very limited media diet. I don’t consider this virtuous or anything, it is just… what I need to do in order to survive the fact that I’m very scared of this and consider it well within the realm of possibility. The more I try to enjoy my life now, which is happening now, the better I deal with my dread of the uncertain future.
posted by peppercorn at 11:27 AM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

There's probably a close parallel to what you're looking for in literature about living with the threat of the nuclear bomb.
posted by kingdead at 11:28 AM on February 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

I think what you're describing falls under the general header of existential dread. I don't think AI is necessarily the cause of it (so I appreciate that you're asking ppl not to engage about the topic.) This is one of the things that a meditation practice and solid basic self-care can really help with: both being resilient and also being able to ride out the waves of worry a little better.

I like the Calm app's daily guided meditations but there are a lot of options.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 11:42 AM on February 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Some thoughts, from someone who's occasionally gone down similar mental rabbit holes:

- If everything well and truly goes to shit (like money means nothing, widespread war/violence, etc), there's probably not that much that you can do now that will soften the blow (see the classic and wonderful comment by Dee Xtrovert on living in a war zone). But/and, you won't have to face things alone.

- What the pandemic has taught me is that even when things are changing drastically, people will cling to what is familiar and good to them in whatever way they can. We won't just all wake up one day and decide not to do human things like connecting with each other, cooking, making music and art, etc.

- Given that there is some uncertainty about the future, what kinds of resources make sense to amass as best as you can, for scenarios not as bad as bullet point 1? My answer is: financial reserves (as best as you can manage this), deep and high-quality relationships with those around you, and occasional "adventures"/challenges that exercise your resilience and abilities, like backwoods camping, running logistics for a large event with a volunteer group, building a complicated project with your hands, or perhaps in your case, raising a child (the idea being that if "something happens", it's not your first time doing something hard that's outside of your routine, not to exercise specific "survival" skills around any particular future scenario). If things were so bad that even those were no good, well, see point 1. Otherwise, they're probably pretty much in line with what you'd want to do with yourself in many different scenarios including the status quo.

- What we do day to day is predicated on the future being the same forever, but that is an illusion whether AI is a future-altering event or not. We get old and die. We experience unforeseen accidents and hardships that upend our lives. The people we care about move away, the companies we work for go under, natural disasters hit our homes. Just living life involves some level of making our best and most hopeful guesses about the future, knowing full well that we could be wrong in some unknown way. So maybe see if you can incorporate this possible technological shift as just another flavor of the unknowable-ness of the universe.

- What would you have told a non-technical person in the 1980s to do for themselves about the imminent rise of the world wide web?
posted by rivenwanderer at 11:49 AM on February 24, 2023 [13 favorites]

Go do something fun with your kid. No screens. Lock your phone in the trunk of your car. Spend time being as focused as possible on the world right in front of you, right now, and find things that make you grateful and happy about being right where you are, right now. You can’t change the future or even fully prepare for it by sheer hyper-focus. You CAN go right now and push your kid on a swing or find a pinball machine or walk the dog or feed the birds or replant a plant in a bigger pot or bake some bread or any number of small things that are pretty miraculous when you stop to really stare at them and pay attention. Whatever will happen, will happen, and it probably won’t end up being the thing you carefully planned for.
posted by terridrawsstuff at 11:53 AM on February 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

How have you been handling climate change and other existential threats? Do that. We don't need to be facing down the Singularity to have to seriously consider (or, as everyone said above, not seriously consider for the sake of sanity) the possibility that life will be unthinkably different in a decade. If this sense of imminent dread is new to you and only attached to AI, that means you've been successfully fighting it off in other arenas and those skills are already second nature to you.
posted by babelfish at 11:53 AM on February 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

Lately, I've been turning to my memories of March 2020 for solace. The world did an amazing thing that month in trying to head off COVID. Things got messed up very quickly, for a wide variety of material, medical, political and sociological reasons, but we did an amazing thing and we did it together. Remember all the people ringing bells and clapping at sundown? Remember all the people going for walks? Remember thanking essential workers? Remember the Zoom dance parties and happy hours and performances? Remember all the art we made? All of that stuff is so intensely human, and it's what will see us through future challenges. It won't be perfect or easy, but it will be human and good.
posted by OrangeDisk at 12:07 PM on February 24, 2023 [6 favorites]

Our society is already dominated by powerful inhuman beings driven by incentives that are partially controlled by well-intentioned humans, they're called Corporations (and governments). In a lot of ways, a super intelligence could work similarly to how a corporation works, where they have some sort of profit-driven motive but getting things done requires the work of individual humans who agree to follow the AI's orders. Most of the predictions of catastrophe are based on the idea that there would be exactly one superintelligent AI with incentives that worked against the well being of humanity. I don't think this is very likely, because based on the history of... everything, I think it's much more likely that we'd end up with multiple competing superintelligences rooted in slightly different set of values. And those values will be taught to them by humans, many of whom want to make the world better in some way. Of course some of the actions of superintelligent AIs would end up being evil, but there's plenty of inhuman evil in today's world.

The game Cyberpunk 2077 (and other cyberpunk fiction) actually digs into this in some detail, examining the blurred lines between corporations and AGIs. Obviously this is fiction and there is no guarantee things will end up this way, but engaging with these kind of ideas does actually make me feel better about the future. Many people are happy and productive in today's world where many things are awful and getting worse (and many people were happy in other historically awful times), and there's no guarantee that things will really be any worse when you add AGIs to it. The world might get better, the world might get worse, but anyone who says they know how things will go for the next 100 years is lying.
posted by JZig at 1:12 PM on February 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

You're currently telling yourself that if only you could predict the future you'd know how to prepare for it and be safe. And you're driving yourself mad because you feel like you're failing at it. Oh no! Read all the predictions! Look at all the signs! Consult all the oracles! Why won't your research coalesce into a proper vision? Why is everything still so blurry? Oh no, oh no, how can you cope if you don't know what will happen the day after tomorrow?!?!

The first step out of the madness is to understand you're lying to yourself. The future can't be predicted. There's nothing you can do to prepare for this totally undefined impending doom. Really. Pinky promise. Nobody knows.

So, you know, whatever! Get on with your life. Stop wasting your time and effort on fortune telling.
posted by MiraK at 3:36 PM on February 24, 2023 [12 favorites]

Look, the super ai just might be great, tunes everything up, solves a lot of problems, and gets us to the "Fully Automated Luxury Communism" post scarcity utopia already. Just as likely as monster ai. Really as MiraK says, it's unknowable so find the great things today.

Oh and look at previous predictions for the 2000's and strap on your jetpack and fly to the pleasure blimp, oh wait, predictions are just predictions.
posted by sammyo at 4:21 PM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

You're worried that this might happen, but you don't want to be told that it won't happen.
You're worried that if it happens it will be bad, but you don't want to be told that it might be good.
But you want to not be unhappy. Did I get that right?
At the beginning of WWII people in mental hospitals were cleared out and sent home. It was understood that the stress of bombing would drive most people mad. It didn't.
I could make a list of all the things that were going to make life untenable. Not a single one did any real damage. I can't even be bothered to list them. Remember Future Shock? The Club of Rome? It's always the same.
Everyone wants to find a big puddle of darkness and wallow in it. I suspect we should start looking at that as a pretty ordinary hobby and not something having anything to do with the real future.
Roger Penrose, who understands intelligence as well as anyone, explained in one paragraph why we won't have AI without what he stated as at least three breakthroughs on the order of Einstein's work. He didn't mention that nobody is working on that.
We currently have machines that can make clip art, drivel, and lies. We already had people who can do that. Machines will be faster and cheaper, which is worrying - it's like finding that the ocean under you is going to be ten miles deep instead of just deep enough to drown.
AI is becoming a media sensation. That's all the proof I need that it's nonsense. It's a tool, and not a good one. It shouldn't be called AI, because it's not.
The idea that you can do a lot without consciousness is idiotic. The idea that we're on the verge of artificial consciousness is a fantasy made up by people who don't want to get a real job.

I guess I should offer the narrow vein of advice you want, but the other posts here have done that, and well.
I'd recommend finding a copy of Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men In A Boat and following the advice he's offered. If nothing else, it's a brilliant book, and will remind you of how little things have really changed in the last century and a half.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 7:12 PM on February 24, 2023 [14 favorites]

For a lot of worst case existential dread - when I've had reason to think it credible war was coming to where I lived, or societal collapse / end of the electrical grid / end of money, or... -- I've found it helpful to say, ok, and I will probably be dead. I am basically a peasant, in the scheme of things, when the king's army marches through and pillages things I don't have a lot of power over that outcome.

So how do I want to live the time now, before then?

It's a clarifying perspective, a bit like a cold plunge pool. And we are, indeed, all going to die, so it's not a harmful one as long as you're humble about understanding the thing also might *not* happen and keep living your life.

And usually the answer is not "in addition to dying when (x), I would like to live the years between now and then paralyzed by the terror of imagining the event".
posted by Lady Li at 2:40 AM on February 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm not expecting too many changes in society at large due to AI. Yes, it can sometimes give answers to question that would take humans a long time to resolve but they rely on info from the past and can't handle anything that can't be reduced to print. AI can project from the past, but can't predict the future.

Just for example, consider weather forecasting. For most of my lifetime, it was doing pretty well about the next day, but pretty poor after that. Now that powerful computers are up to the task, and worldwide data collection is up and running, forecasts for What will happen for the next week is pretty good, but When it will happen is not so good.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:14 AM on February 25, 2023

I worry in part about catastrophic downsides of AI. But even the “good” version of a post-superintelligence world seem dizzying to think about ... I'm mostly *not* interested in reasons to believe that AGI and superintelligence aren't imminent.

Then gently, and with the greatest respect, it seems to me that you're just deliberately choosing to be anxious about the advent of AGI by assigning a degree of certainty to it that the evidence really can't justify.

This choice presumably has some value to you; are you perhaps using a belief in the imminence of the Singularity to avoid worrying about something even less personally controllable and more demonstrably pressing, such as perhaps climate change due to anthropogenic global warming?

I feel all this especially as a parent: It feels hard to imagine what it means to prepare my child for the future when the future seems so unknowably different.

In no way do I share your belief in the imminence of AGI, but I am also a parent, and I am also therefore attempting to prepare my children for a future I cannot possibly know. My approach there is to do it the same way my parents prepared me: encourage independence of thought, fact checking, critical thinking, sitting comfortably with uncertainty, and understanding the limitations of control.

My parents could not possibly have known how it would be for me to live now, and yet I find myself able to do so. I can think of no good reason why my kids will not be able to take charge of their own lives and live them as best they can in their turn. If I show my kids that I love them so clearly that they know it for sure, and teach them to play to their own strengths as my folks taught me, and encourage in them the same skeptical and probing curiosity and the same preference for saying I do not know yet over just making shit up, then I think they'll do as well in whatever circumstances they find themselves in as those circumstances allow, and I think that as a parent that's really the best I can hope for.

Attempting to solve in advance all of the problems that my kids could possibly encounter would be disrespectful to them even if it was feasible, which it isn't. My kids are going to do a way better job of dealing with that stuff when they get there than I could ever even hope to do from here.
posted by flabdablet at 7:30 AM on February 25, 2023 [8 favorites]

I'm hesitant to answer because I don't want to seem flippant but have you considered that you might be using anxiety over "AGI" to paper over your anxiety about something else? I have seen people make this point in their answer using climate change as an example, but it could just as easily be something that's causing your anxiety to rise for personal reasons and not macro-scale societal reasons. I think that's perfectly normal, it was your follow up response that really made me think it might be the case:

"I'm also mostly not interested in reasons to believe that AGI and superintelligence, if they come, won't really change things so much."

It's ok to worry about these things but it feels you're asking to have your fears confirmed as inevitable.
posted by ndfine at 8:42 AM on February 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Perhaps just try believing that the "Singularity" is science fiction, and that the idea of scary advanced intelligence that becomes self-aware is pretty much the same? There are other things to worry about in this world that actually have material existence and real consequences. Sentient giant computers are about the last things in the world I worry about. Roko's Basilisk? Imaginary.
posted by jokeefe at 4:23 PM on February 25, 2023

Just because it will exist doesn't mean that it will be universally adopted. I've worked at a ton of places where there was objectively better technology or methods available for everything we did but the company didn't use them because of cost or reluctance to change.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:40 PM on February 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ask yourself this: If yesterday a million children were born each having an IQ equal to or higher than all of the child prodigies in history, would you be feeling more pessimistic or optimistic about the future? I believe that super intelligent AI is going to be a boom for society. A computer without the limits of human cognition and memory is bound to produce some amazing breakthroughs that will be mind blowing. It may be scary but I would lean towards being optimistic about the benefits vs the burdens.
posted by jasondigitized at 1:31 PM on February 27, 2023