My friend Sam and I played Halo this weekend and discussed Gen AI a bit. I'm more often in Master Chief's space than the LLM space, but it's interesting to think about how far away other life impacting technologies might be. Time is funny - everything has changed since I had a flip phone in high school... but also, not that much has changed.
Spoiler - I made a markdown table with the following questions.
10 questions to consider
Programming
- Will humans no longer write code?
- Will humans no longer review code?
Mechanical tasks
- Will citizens still be allowed to drive cars?
- Will humans still perform surgeries?
Workforce
- Will there be universal basic income (UBI)?
- Will teaching / nursing / other labor intensive jobs be replaced by robots?
"AI"
- Will people consume personalized media? Consider: movies, TV, music, books, podcasts, news
- Will governments openly give AIs1 a role in creating policy or governing?
Space
- Will there be a colony on the Moon or Mars?
- Will any governments be building a generation spaceship?
Instructions
Use the following table to make your predictions for 2 / 15 / 50 years in the future.
Prompts
- For 1-4, ask "Will humans no longer..."
- For 5-10, ask "Will any / many countries have..."
Keys
- 🥇 means "in one or several countries"
- 🗺️ means "the majority of the world"
| Question | 2 years | 15 years | 50 years |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Write code | - | - | - |
| 2. Review code | - | - | - |
| 3. Drive cars | - | - | - |
| 4. Do surgery | - | - | - |
| 5. Universal basic income | - | - | - |
| 6. Robotic caretaking | - | - | - |
| 7. Personalized media | - | - | - |
| 8. AI-powered government | - | - | - |
| 9. Colony on Moon or Mars | - | - | - |
| 10. Generation spaceship | - | - | - |
Example
| Question | 2 years | 15 years | 50 years |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10. Generation spaceship | - | 🥇 | 🗺️ |
This would be read as:
For generation spaceships...
- no change in 2 years
- in 15 years, a few countries will have started on generation spaceships
- in 50 years, most people on Earth will live in countries that have started working on generation spaceships
If that reads a little wordily, it's because not everything happens everywhere at the same rate.2
Considerations
Before answering, ask yourself: if you made a list 2 years ago, what would it have looked like?
What about 15 years ago?
...Or 50?
Fork it!
You can fork a Github gist with the markdown table here: gist.github.com/sgardn/155...
Recommended reading
Books and articles that may have informed my completely unsubstantiated grid above:
- Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
- Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
- Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
- I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
- Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
- Exhalation by Ted Chiang
- Why AI Isn't Going to Make Art (New Yorker) by Ted Chiang
Keep scrolling if you want to see my predictions!
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(I'd recommend making your own before you bias yourself though)
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My predictions
| Question | 2 years | 15 years | 50 years |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Write code | - | 🥇 | 🗺️ |
| 2. Review code | - | 🥇 | 🗺️ |
| 3. Drive cars | - | 🥇 | 🗺️ |
| 4. Do surgery | - | 🥇 | 🗺️ |
| 5. Universal basic income | - | - | 🥇 |
| 6. Robotic caretaking | - | - | 🥇 |
| 7. Personalized media | - | 🥇 | 🗺️ |
| 8. AI-powered government | - | 🥇 | 🗺️ |
| 9. Colony on Moon or Mars | - | - | 🥇 |
| 10. Generation spaceship | - | - | 🥇 |