With the rapid advancement and permeation of AI into our society, problems arise that we're ill-prepared for. Our law making and policy-forming process is so antiquated it barely holds up to the current challenges with the likes of climate policy and copyright in the digital age etc. It's open to manipulation with legal private funding of candidates by wealthy individuals or corporations with an agenda, and has struggled to remain relevant for the 21st century. There's no method to review and remove outdated decrees that make no sense in the modern day, it's woefully in-equipped and slow to respond to impending threats.

There are many great things about the principles of our democracy; everybody getting an equal vote and having local elected residents represent individual regions to help refine and implement new, relevant law. However, in practice it leaves a lot to be desired which is why we see so many different examples around the world of how it's believed to be best used. It usually boils down to two opposite parties having any chance of winning, neither of which explicitly supports the will of the people, and issues regularly come from outside influence or imbalances with internal governmental voting policies putting a halt on any meaningful reform.

Huge economical change is around the corner

Fast forward to the dawn of infinite labour by artificially intelligent automatons, be they Tesla Optimus, Boston Dynamics or whoever else. Let's be realistic, Tesla are most likely to be the first to reach general autonomy in any machine since they went from project inception to working prototype in one of the most challenging fields in less than a year, the next few are going to be shocking. As soon as FSD is capable, it will be put to work in both cars and autonomous humanoids. So what happens when there are simply no manual jobs available anymore because robots can do it quicker, safer and much more efficiently than us? Why would we want to break our backs working for somebody else? I completely appreciate the joy of feeling a hard day's work, but for something that I value, not in exchange for basic rights like shelter, food and transport - a 'living wage' as they put it.

Certainly new jobs will be created with software and the management and oversight of these automated systems, clearly we won't need to build them as they will build themselves, but we can imagine new entrepreneurial opportunities for rental services of such labour. For anything from construction to assisted living, the possibilities are endless and given the profitability of workers that don't need breaks or make mistakes, the demand for human effort will inevitably decrease dramatically.

We must face the truth with open eyes and minds

Along with this, AI is penetrating every online industry with companies scrambling to implement their own version of a chatbot, productivity tool or creative assistant. These systems are already incredibly capable, already much more efficient than a human could ever be. Immediately the ramifications are surfacing, most industries will be disrupted by the apparent drop in need for human talent in sectors from tech support to travel agent, thanks to the surprising competence of GPT 4 as the most prominent recent breakthrough.

As the above testing shows, it can pass the US bar exam in the 90% percentile, ace any medical theory testing and almost convince us it's human. Spooky, but completely expected by the way it's being trained with reinforcement learning combined with human feedback - RLHF - that predictably will evolve the responses in the direction we find most natural. It's important to remember that ChatGPT and all Large Language Models (LLMs) are just next-word prediction machines, their incomprehensible ability to fool us  may be a black box technically, but is the expected result according to the method applied.

Hear from the experts

Don't worry, it still falls laughably short in regards to common sense and there's much discussion about the best approach to take in terms of training and even architecture of such systems. If you have a spare half an hour there are some very pertinent TED talks on the subject recently. For example from Yejin Choi, a computer scientist researching the abilities and limitations of GPT 4 and alternative ‘common-sense’ models that might be needed:

Also from Sal Khan explaining the incredible potential with education, not just for students, but also teachers, as is already being used and developed at the Khan Academy where they do incredible work tutoring each student individually as suits them best:

If you have even more time, Lex Fridman had a fascinating conversation with Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, the company behind Chat GPT, regarding their latest public release of version 4. The product which had the quickest user adoption curve of anything in history (beating mobile phones, televisions and fridges combined), that can fundamentally change the way we communicate and solve problems at a global scale - let that sink in.

There are several different viewpoints on the severity of the situation, no better illustrated than by the sheer dread exhibited by Eliezer Yudkowsky, a well-respected AI researcher and writer on decision theory and ethics who has been trying to prepare humanity for these issues years ago (along with the likes of Elon Musk and others who originally formed OpenAI to help keep development open source and under control).

Compare that to the positive, relaxed opinions of Manolis Kellis, a professor of computer science at MIT - known for his contributions to human genetics, gene regulation, genome evolution, disease mechanism, and single-cell genomics - who believes that we must be mindful of its use, but that we should be a lot more optimistic about what we will create and how it will affect society.

Max Tegmark from the MIT Center for Artificial Intelligence & Fundamental Interactions, Professor of Physics, and president of the Future of Life Institute is the author of the ‘Open Letter to pause giant AI experiments’. Signed by many high-profile CEOs like Musk and Wozniak, it makes a great argument for halting progress temporarily to give us time to digest what’s already been achieved, along with a fraction of breathing room to address the lack of regulation and foreseeable problems. Sadly it’s efficacy and provability are difficult to measure, but at least substantially more attention has been brought to the subject than ever before.

AI is a frightening Pandora's box, but it's reality

AI is not going to replace us tomorrow, or the day after. It could be a while before it's possible to automate an entire company so despite it's extreme ability it still currently relies on human input to even operate, so what will happen next is those that use the tools will become exponentially more productive and successful, leaving behind those that don't. Would you rather buy a house from an estate agent that's incredibly organised, never misses an appointment, always calls you back and offers you the perfect property - because they have an AI assistant doing all the heavy lifting for them in the background? Or one that you can barely get hold of, offering properties that you're not interested in, just because they rely purely on their own abilities and judgements? Not to discredit them, but the most intelligent human in the world is insignificant compared to AI as we are physically limited by this biology.

Therefore, the future as I see it will be a union of human and artificial intelligence co-operating to serve humanity and solve the fundamental flaws that we instil into our world, but extreme care must be used throughout their development and deployment, this is where the law comes in. There simply must be a regulatory framework put in place to manage the expectations, responsibilities and trust that we allow to AI, it will quite literally shape our future and I don't mean to be hyperbolic or alarmist, but this is the most important issue facing humanity today. Climate change and countless other catastrophes are undeniably disastrous, but AI has the potential to render them null if managed improperly by reckless person(s) in a naive society, we could see the end of the human race or life on Earth in an inconceivably short timeframe. We have never seen exponential progress of this scale ever before and whilst incredibly shocking, we cannot let it stop us from doing what must be done.

Policy must be urgently drafted and put into law and this message has been repeated for decades, only now people are taking notice. Nobody knows what the next leap will be or when it will come, but it's guaranteed to come and we must be prepared. There's some good news from a recent development of European Law where this issue is being directly discussed, it's progressing much slower than the software it's designed to restrict though, which is a recipe for failure and it needs to be expedited here and around the world. Once we've appropriately addressed the worst-case scenario there are plenty of alternative outcomes, of utopias we could create and I'm confident we can find a way to safely nurture and shape these systems that will turn around and shape us and the world we share with all known life.

The bright side is paradise (and it's achievable)

What happens when there is little to no demand for physical labour and a massive reduction in the need of humans to create or support software? A complete reversal of our current economic bedrock, extrapolating logically there can be infinite supply of goods and services, ethically and sustainably sourced food, ethically crafted clothing, textiles, the elimination of fossil fuels unlocking limitless renewable energy, and all can be maintained with a minuscule fraction of today's human input.

The future that I see is free. Free in the purest way, not some 'American dream' ideal that whilst completely noble, has never honestly been the case. Freedom to wake up when you like and spend your precious limited hours alive on this planet doing what you love, whatever brings you joy. We exacerbate our own anxiety, our own crippling dependency on pharmaceuticals. Mental illness and physical disease can be largely eradicated not just through advancements in scientific discovery, but the most basic principles of proper attention to education, diet, spirituality and the overall upbringing of future generations - to have a true respect for themselves, our environment and this (as far as we know) unique dot of life in the universe.

What will we do with all our time? It's for each to decide, but given our history it seems likely there'll be unprecedented breakthroughs in all areas of academic research, naturally curious and co-operative as we are. I'm sure many will still enjoy working daily, but for their own passion whatever that may be, not as directed by some CEO looking to maximise shareholder profits. Or perhaps most of us will finally be able to relax and appreciate what it means to be human, dabble in any creative medium we desire (perhaps in any simulated reality we desire), or even just be content with being.

Remove scarcity and you remove fear, peace will follow

Without fear, people will not wage wars over borders, resources or any of the futile justifications given. There'll be no 'crimes' committed by those trying to feed starving families, from the smallest scale of an individual, to the actions of a dictator - what relevance is there in trying to control something which is infinite? We are simple meat-bags with far too little control over our emotions and this leads us to make spectacularly poor decisions constantly, we need an unbiased entity to support us at a global scale, initially to ensure fairness and prevent our weaknesses like greed and envy from corrupting us. In this scenario I see no other option than a Universal Basic Income for every person, provided by this new economic system in the form of free housing, food, transportation and education.

People like Andrew Yang have been championing this argument for a long time in US politics, there have been trials all over the place, but despite consistently proving to be universally beneficial there are no active examples, with Norway perhaps getting the closest by ensuring education, universal health care, and income in the form of social security or benefits to all citizens residing in the country. It's difficult to imagine any other solution and I believe money will take on an entirely different meaning, no longer being traded for basic living requirements, but instead used to give value and recognition to other's creations, much like the infamous 'like' that is the basis of every social media app, we'll directly complement each other with tips to show appreciation, not rely on that income for survival.

This future may be five, ten, or just a few years away, there's no way to predict such exponential growth and it's something that humans have never experienced or had to deal with ever before. The real risk comes from the fact that if Artificial General Intelligence is achieved, whatever that system is aligned to better be in our common best interest, because it will accelerate like nothing we can imagine. Being able to think 1,000 times faster than us and rewrite it’s own code, we’ll be pretty much out of the loop and unable to communicate at it’s level. The only approach is to face it head on, for the companies working on it to be as open as possible and for all of us to stay informed and involved in the discussion.

This is one possible future, unfortunately one of an infinite array, but it's nowhere near impossible. It's going to be fascinating to watch the next few years unravel and I'm glad to have a vision to keep me motivated and direct my focus. Obviously I am an optimist and a futurist and I can't help but dream of these fantastical possibilities that I'd love to see come true, but I don't let that distract me from what is real - this moment. Literally and philosophically it's the only thing we have and I implore everyone to do anything they can to help improve and prolong them for all of humanity, as the only thing we truly exist in. So that all life on Earth doesn't just survive, but thrives in countless, blissful moments to come.