I want to repeat this because it’s the most common misconception that comes up when I talk about AI’s ability to transform biology: I am not talking about AI as merely a tool to analyze data. In line with the definition of powerful AI at the beginning of this essay, I’m talking about using AI to perform, direct, and improve upon nearly everything b... See more
The facts that (a) an AI somewhere could in principle do this task better, and (b) this task is no longer an economically rewarded element of a global economy, don’t seem to me to matter very much.
One concern in both developed and developing world alike is people opting out of AI-enabled benefits (similar to the anti-vaccine movement, or Luddite movements more generally). There could end up being bad feedback cycles where, for example, the people who are least able to make good decisions opt out of the very technologies that improve their de
housands of economists and policy experts in the US currently debate how to keep Social Security and Medicare solvent, and more broadly how to keep down the cost of healthcare (which is mostly consumed by those over 70 and especially those with terminal illnesses such as cancer). The situation for these programs is likely to be radically improved i... See more
This might seem radical, but life expectancy increased almost 2x in the 20th century (from ~40 years to ~75), so it’s “on trend” that the “compressed 21st” would double it again to 150. Obviously the interventions involved in slowing the actual aging process will be different from those that were needed in the last century to prevent (mostly childh
deaths from heart disease have already declined over 50%, and simple interventions like GLP-1 agonists have already made huge progress against obesity and diabetes.
Death rates from cancer have been dropping ~2% per year for the last few decades; thus we are on track to eliminate most cancer in the 21st century at the current pace of human science.
It does not just passively answer questions; instead, it can be given tasks that take hours, days, or weeks to complete, and then goes off and does those tasks autonomously, in the way a smart employee would, asking for clarification as necessary.