AI and the bright future ahead
By: Ben Edwards
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, AI, Predictions, Future, Humanity

It cannot be overstated that so many of the problems plaguing our world today are very solvable. Given today’s abundant wealth and advanced technologies, we need not have any hunger, pollution, energy needs, traffic deaths, political inefficiency, terrorism, or wars. If we better distributed and deployed the innovations and resources we have right now, these would all be things of the past. We’ve mapped the human genome and are manipulating DNA, we’re learning more ways to deploy nanotechnology, and we could colonize the moon, and probably Mars in five years if we had the will. There is no end to the things we can do — all with our puny monkey-brains. A smarter entity could greatly hasten these advancements and usher in many more undiscovered and unthinkable (for us) ones.

“There are no hard problems, only problems that are hard to a certain level of intelligence. Move the smallest bit upwards [in level of intelligence], and some problems will suddenly move from ‘impossible’ to ‘obvious.’ Move a substantial degree upwards, and all of them will become obvious.”

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, MIRI

Everything we make, indeed, anything that has ever been made, is made up of atoms. And there aren’t that many of them — hydrogen and helium make up 98% of the universe’s matter⁷ and 98.8% of Earth’s mass comes from just 8 elements: iron, oxygen, silicon, magnesium, sulfur, nickel, calcium, and aluminium. We are getting closer and closer to being able to manipulate the smallest known bits of our universe. For example:

Genetics — Scientists have now successfully edited a human embryo to “delete” a gene linked to heart conditions. Additionally, genetic modifications to neurons in the brain show that the use of genetic editing is not restricted to growing cells but mature cells as well.⁸

— Scientists have now successfully edited a human embryo to “delete” a gene linked to heart conditions. Additionally, genetic modifications to neurons in the brain show that the use of genetic editing is not restricted to growing cells but mature cells as well.⁸ Quantum Computing — Advances at Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and several research groups indicate that computers with previously unimaginable power are finally within reach.⁹

— Advances at Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and several research groups indicate that computers with previously unimaginable power are finally within reach.⁹ Nanotechnology — Researchers have found ways to use nanochip technology to modify skin cells into other functional cells simply by placing a device with an electrical field on a person’s skin.¹⁰

Once we appropriate nanotechnology, the next step will be manipulating individual atoms (only one order of magnitude smaller). It stands to reason, that once we can break things down to their smallest elements and build them back up — moving individual atoms or molecules around — we will be able to build, literally, anything.

What can we* achieve with the help of a superhuman intellect? Disease, poverty, environmental destruction, scarcity, unnecessary suffering of all kinds could be eliminated by a superintelligence equipped with advanced nanotechnology.¹¹

* using the “royal we” here as the AI will actually be doing it.

Furthermore, “a superintelligence could give us indefinite lifespan, either by stopping and reversing the aging process through the use of nanomedicine, or by offering us the option to upload ourselves.” says Nick Bostrom, author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies¹²

Here’s another excerpt from Tim Urban’s post about the AI Revolution and how ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) may change everything: