The Precipice
Existential Risk and The Future of Humanity
From one of the world's leading moral voices, this urgent and eye-opening book makes the case that protecting humanity's future is the central challenge of our time.
If all goes well, human history is just beginning. Our species could survive for billions of years - enough time to end disease, poverty, and injustice, and to flourish in ways unimaginable today. But this vast future is at risk.
The most provocative philosopher of our times returns with a rousing and counterintuitive analysis of our global predicament. We hear all the time that it's five minutes to global doomsday, so now is our last chance to avert disaster.
#BilboToday This expression of a beagle that you "forced" to go out in the pouring #rain! World-weariness, incomprehension, silent accusation, and yet behind it all, unconditional love.
I'd like to train myself with it. And throw that gaze intensively at everyone who destroys this #earth, wastes #chances for a livable #future, or divides instead of unites. Our #world needs a hell of a lot of these glances! And for the stubborn humans we all had a big 💩 ? 😈 #LearningFromBeagles#news#humanity
A few years ago, I got rid of all my paper books and switched exclusively to eBooks. Whenever I tell bibliophiles1 this, they usually shriek in horror. What about the smell of books2?!!? What about showing off your bookcases to impress people3!?!? What about your signed first editions4!??!?! But the other day I had someone…
>"None of the 17 #UnitedNations#SustainableDevelopmentGoals (#SDGs) is on track to be achieved by 2030... But progress on a few, including the 14th goal — to conserve and #sustainably use the #oceans — has actually been going backwards since the 2015 UN summit..."
📌 Industrial robots today are programmed to perform specific and repetitive tasks, which limits their versatility; to make them perform different actions, they need to be reprogrammed by a person.
📌 Incorporating #AI into industrial #robots could enable them to learn autonomously from their own actions and the environment; they would thus learn to perform diversified tasks and decide in real-time which task to carry out.
📌 Developing #AI-integrated #robots capable of adapting and learning is no small challenge, especially for complex and dynamic work environments; one of the critical aspects is that robots can cause significant damage, including harm to people, if not properly controlled.
📌 The #startup Covariant is precisely addressing this issue, currently focusing on the warehouse #logistics sector; to delve deeper, I recommend listening to the episode of "This Week in Startups," which I'm sharing at the end of this thread.
❓ Now, considering the potential developments of a #technology like this, several questions come to mind; here are some:
🤔 #Robots of this kind could reduce the need for human #labor in certain tasks and industries. What #social implications could arise? How should we rethink the right to #employment? What actions should #schools and training institutions take today to prepare tomorrow's workers for a #future like this?
🤔 Considering that these #robots can cause severe harm, how should the responsibilities of #businesses and developers be distributed in ensuring #safety and control of such machines? What kinds of technologies and approaches should we develop to prevent accidents or abuses arising from their autonomy? How should we rethink the concept of safety in the #workplace?
🤔 What will happen to #businesses that cannot keep up with this #technology if it gains traction? On what other aspects can those businesses focus their competitive advantage, and how should we reimagine the very idea of competitive advantage in a world where industrial #robots can learn and work autonomously? What kind of technological and #social divide might arise from these innovations?
🤔 A #robot capable of learning and making decisions about actions to take could be the first step toward the development of entrepreneurial robots, i.e., #AI-driven robots capable of founding and managing new #startups and #businesses. How would the #economy and #finance change if this were to happen?
📌 Google Research, American Airlines, and Breakthrough Energy have collaborated to develop #forecast maps for contrail formation (the white trails seen behind flying airplanes) using artificial intelligence based on #data such as satellite images, meteorological data, and flight paths.
📌 The trade-off is that this approach could lead to a 2% increase in fuel consumption; however, the overall fuel impact on an airline's flights could still be limited to 0.3%.
❓ Now, a couple of #questions among the many I have contemplated while considering this news from a #future perspective:
🤔 How could the use of contrail #forecast maps evolve in the field of #aviation navigation and air traffic #management policies, and what work, economic, social, and environmental challenges might emerge from this evolution?
🤔 What could be the consequences of using #AI in reducing contrail formation on potential climate impact disparities among different airlines or regions of the world?
It gathers a lot of data and interesting observations. Here are the ones that struck me the most:
📌 Generative #artificialintelligence excels in tasks that require natural language processing and content creation, outperforming humans in terms of speed and cost-effectiveness.
📌 Generative AI's efficiency impacts high-value tasks in white-collar roles, potentially offering comparable performance to humans at a fraction of the cost.
💭 My thought: in a scenario that describes our immediate #future, like the one outlined in the article, it will be increasingly essential to know how to ask the right questions — questions that help guide, interpret, give meaning, and make room for our humanity, starting precisely from the philosophical dialogue that should be continuously encouraged about and with #digital and #technology.
"Earth Species Project is a non-profit dedicated to using #artificialintelligence to decode non-human #communication.
We believe that an understanding of non-human languages will transform our relationship with the rest of nature."
"More than 8 million species share our planet. We only understand the language of one."
It's 2027. LLM's are built into Systems on Chips. Everyone sees their own personalized worlds. Their computers show things in a way the user likes. Or the manufactorers like. Or the ad agencies like. Who knows. Apple helps us all write calm, understandable texts, posts, and books. Google shows us, in AR, "only what we need to see." A map on our walk we take to decompress. No, there are no homeless people in the street. Just follow the lines on the map. Yeah, like that. Hear that soft music. Your own personalized playlist, all made by AI. You like Mooncake right? Well, here's something that sounds like them. A little. But it's 24/7. More, more, more.
Some people make mistakes in their work to show that they're human. That wrong note? That's a mark of humanity. That misspelled word? They're one of us. That blotch of ink? A soul made that. Perfection is of the machines. To err is human.
The blind can see now. But at what cost? The machines know us all now. They see our faces. They see them, pick out details from what they see and what they know. Then they feed that to blind people, who eagerly gulp it down like a dry sponge. But the AI doesn't mention how fake the smile is, on the person who sees the camera that sees them. Wave for the camera, for the machine. But for the blind person, who only wants to have what sighted people were born with? Well.
Our computers then correct all that input. That misspelling? Surely the human didn't mean to do that. The blotch of ink is gone. All distilled into blandness. People begin writing on paper again. Blind people get what the AI gives, just as before. People are angry that their analog becomes digital again. Cycles and cycles. Dim and light. Gifts and hooks. Humanity and the seeking and the taking.