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There has been a lot of hype news in robotics + AI lately, as the AI updates just continue to come at a blinding pace. From Tesla/XAI we have the Optimus robot, which I can't tell if this is a major breakthrough or just another marketing splash driven by Elon.
On the other side of the fence, you have Nvidia releasing an open foundational model for robotics and partnering with Disney of all companies to make a droid robot.
You also have Google's I/O, which I haven't had the energy to look into.
With the speed of AI updates and the wars of hype, it's always hard to tell who is actually advancing the frontier. But it does seem that in particular robotics are advancing quite rapidly compared to even a couple of years ago. Personally I think that while automating white collar work is useful and such, AI entering into robotics will be the real game changer. If we can begin to massively automate building things like housing, roads, and mass manufactured goods, all of the sudden we get into an explosive growth curve.
Of course, this is where AGI doomer fears do become more salient, so that's something to watch out for.
Either way, another day, another AI discourse. What do you think of this current crop of news?
It is crazy to me that most people alive today will be around to see how this - this journey of civilization, this grand process of technological development - ends, or at least moves far, far beyond us. There is a millenarian tension in the air. Paradise or extinction (at least for most people), it seems increasingly clear it will be one or the other.
Yeah, a lot of contradictory thought patterns emerge if I ruminate about the future more than like 2 years out.
Should I live as conservatively, frugally and healthily as possible to ensure I make it to there in good shape, or should I be more reckless and try to enjoy life as much as possible since it could all end? (obviously if EVERYBODY does the latter, we might not make it there at all).
Assuming we survive, are we bound for a future of exploring the stars and colonizing new worlds, or do we get stuffed in VR experience machines that satisfy every psychological desire we have without going anywhere? Will I even have a choice?
Is there any point in breathlessly following every notable development in the AI/Robotics space to try and guess when the big moment will arrive, or would it be more constructive and mentally healthy to divorce almost entirely from it and just read escapist fiction all the time so I don't worry about something I can't really control?
Should I continue to behave as though I expect society to persist into the next century and thus be very concerned about e.g. birth rates, pollution, government's fiscal policies, and/or immigration policies? Or does none of this matter in 10-15 years, and thus I should just do the bare minimum to keep things running but hey, let the kids do what they want in the meantime. The AI can fix the mess later.
It is in my nature to prepare, both mentally and financially, for things to go south. I don't buy the hype and promises without skepticism, but I can't deny that every 6 months for the past, what, 3 years? The SOTA models have demonstrated new capabilities that check another box off my "is it smarter than humans?" list. The temptation to just give up 'trying' and go with the flow is strong.
A bit of optimism, I do believe that I'm young and healthy enough that I'm likely going to be around when we reach Longevity Escape Velocity, if the AGI stuff never fully manifests we've got all the pieces to fix most age-related problems in humans so as to give us functional immortality by 2050. Which will create a whole host of new and exciting issues if the AGI isn't already in charge.
I'm not entirely sure I believe this but the bear case isn't that hard to articulate.
We hit the top of the S-curve for LLM's and they merely become very useful tools instead of ushering in the singularity or obviating human labor. Frontier research starts stagnating as a result of having picked all the low-hanging fruit / the competency crisis / failure of higher ed / loss of state capacity / pick your favourite boogeymen and life in 2050 looks about as similar to 2025 as life in 2025 looks about as similar to 2000. This hypothetical world is probably worse for the median westerner compared to 2025 owing to some combination of immigration / climate / financialisation etc etc and the path of civilization doesn't look great without some sort of technological salvation but it's unlikely that any of these issues will be back-breaking in one generation.
Re preparation: it's interesting to me that a lot of people's reaction to millenarism is to make life choices that would be very dumb in any world where Nothing Happens. Assuming you're already reasonably happy with your current life, liquidating your job and savings seems to me to have low upside (how much happier is burning all your bridges to be a hedonist really going to make you?) and very high downside (I can see lots of worlds where having a decade or more of savings gets you through the worst of AI societal upheaval, and of course if Nothing Happens your life is knocked significantly off-track).
This is kind of where I'm at personally, I still save a large amount of my income even though I'm also not quite sure if life will still look the same in 25 or 50 years. In any world where it does look similar I'm set, I'm more prepared for any medium-level scenario where investments are still useful in getting through the transition period or retain relevance post-transformation, and in worlds where life becomes so good or so bad that property and index funds become worthless there really nothing I could have done anyways, liquidating everything to do drugs or travel doesn't seem like it has a great ROI when I'm already broadly content with my current life.
As a side note: why are you bullish on LEV? It's my understanding as a complete medical layman that we've pretty much made zero progress on life extension. We're much better at keeping the very young, mothers in childbirth, the unlucky (genetic diseases, trauma, infection, disease etc) and the ill-and-probably-should-be-dead elderly alive, but modern technology hasn't really meaningfully moved the quality-adjusted lifespan of the average healthy person afaik.
Keeping up with the literature, it seems very much like the 'code' of why aging occurs/effects us the way it does has almost been cracked. In short, the information that our cells use to reproduce starts to accumulate errors from both internal and external causes and their ability to repair those errors diminishes in kind (the more errors to repair, the more strain on the repair system). This leads our cells to A) become cancerous, B) Become senescent (nonfunctional but still 'active'), and C) change/mutate to a different type of cell, which obviously isn't helpful.
Eventually this cascades to full organ failure, and we die.
i.e. the science seems to 'know' the reason we 'get old.' The systems behind it are becoming better understood, and now the hunt is on for various methods or drugs or therapies that can trigger or reinforce natural repair systems or otherwise keep the cells reproducing accurately for much longer.
This is an actually tricky question, but a LOT more interest in this area has led to increased funding. It does seem likely that a couple silver bullets might emerge in the near future.
There's the obvious question of "where are the immortal mice?" And I think that's probably the thing that gives me the most doubt. If there's a surefire solution, then labs should be able to demonstrate it by pumping some mice full of it and showing that they just don't die naturally.
But watch out for interventions to extend canine lives. There's clearly something brewing.
And of course. "where are the immortal Billionaires," who could obviously afford any treatment they want, regardless of how experimental or illegal? Although I'd certainly suggest that the Billionaires just hitting their 50's and 60's these days are looking less decrepit than usual.
And I want a Goddamn explanation for how Tom Cruise is still hanging from airplanes in his early 60's. That doesn't invoke Thetans.
However I am reserving some bearishness for the possibility that the whole field is suffering from the current scientific crises where p-hacking, fraud, and failed replications are running rampant. For instance, studies of Blue Zones where extreme human longevity seems to be more common, seems likely to suffer from poor record-keeping, which is to say we can't be sure anyone is really as old as they say.
And that means the information gleaned from studying them will be inherently flawed. This might have ripple effects on the field's validity, if their model of 'extreme' longevity (and thus the metrics they're chasing) are on shaky grounds.
But the motivation to solve this issue is huge, and AI drug discovery is already a thing, so I'd expect some breakthroughs to emerge relatively soon. Maybe we get those immortal mice.
and in the meantime there are definitely a number of smaller interventions that, when done consistently, can up your chances of keeping healthy long enough to survive until aging reversal becomes feasible.
Interesting, thanks.
The current evidence seems to align with my preconceptions that absolutely nothing has happened so far for humans, although I wasn't aware of that dog trial which does seem promising. Perhaps it's true that AI will lead to further innovation in the space, but personally I'd at least like to see some immortal mice before I start hoping to overcome the human condition.
Its not that 'absolutely nothing' has happened, but more that every advance has been marginal, so even if you follow ALL the best advice, you're getting an extra 10-15% of extra lifespan at best.
If you want to see the absolute extreme limit of human longevity science, follow Bryan Johnson.
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