P-Necromancer
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User ID: 3278
P-Necromancer
6d ago
"Knowledge oligarchy" implies the people who know How Things Work will be better off than the ones who don't. That's true now and it will be for a while longer, but mature AI simply renders human intelligence obsolete. The computer is faster than you and smarter than you and way cheaper than you; you simply won't be able to compete, and even trying means wasting effort that could have gone into... whatever does matter in this new world. Social status games, probably.
Like, the vast majority of people used to be involved in agriculture. Over the past couple centuries there's been a precipitous drop in general farming acumen. So is there now a 'farmer oligarchy?' Not even close. In fact, the skill set of the people who do farm is enormously different from the farmers of the past -- the only people keeping that tradition alive are irrelevant hobbyists and idealogues.
So, yes, systems will become more opaque to humans trying to understand them personally, but why would you ever do that? In practice they'll be much more transparent, because you'll just ask your own AI to figure it out for you.
Well sure, human intelligence is only obsolete to the extent artificial intelligence is available as a replacement. There are scenarios where it's not that widely available, but I don't think they're very likely (possibly besides AI killing us all). As we transition to a bread-and-circuses model for keeping the useless masses content (which we probably will because it will be cheaper and less risky than other approaches once AI drives the marginal cost of labor down far enough), direct AI access provides good bang-for-the-buck.
In terms of self actualization: people can self-actualize by doing things inefficiently -- say, playing chess without an engine -- but that doesn't make it not-inefficient. When I say 'obsolete' I mean 'devoid of instrumental purpose,' not necessarily any purpose. Though I suppose playing chess well without an engine, while not high-status in any absolute sense, is certainly higher status than playing it well with one, so maybe that is a flaw in my definition or reasoning.
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