Whispers Beyond The Stars is set twenty-five years from now in one possible future. I wouldn't bet on that being the actual future, history being such a squirmy and chaotic thing, but I’m always interested to hear forecasts of what life is going to be like. Elon Musk claims to think that money won’t matter by 2036. I don’t think he really believes that, but he might think he believes it. Quite possibly he was thrilled as a teenager by Star Trek’s depiction of a post-scarcity society. Adult Elon probably doesn’t realize that the Federation is a socialist utopia, socialism being a term that makes him lose his shit, but the dreams of teen Elon are still sparking away dimly in the depths of that ketamine-treated brain.
Ten years might be a stretch, especially to attain super-intelligent AGI, so let’s stick with Whispers' longer horizon of 2050. With advanced robotics and very good AI, labour might be effectively free. Even energy might be free if (a big if, this) we have controlled fusion. What won’t be free? Living space for one. That apartment overlooking Central Park will still be beyond the means of most. Minerals that only need labour to extract would be more or less free, but unfortunately the rare earths needed for electronics aren’t among them, so your household robot won’t be free unless it has a very different kind of electronic brain from those we can build now.
So this is post-scarcity with a jagged edge. And by the way we in the developed world already have a post-scarcity society from the perspective of the poorer nations. Elon Musk talks about “universal high income” -- no mere UBI for him, you see. Hang on, though. A billion people live on less than $3 a day while the Western World has a median income more than twenty times that. We’re not distributing the world’s wealth fairly now, so why would that change by 2050?
If robotics really takes off, there might be a vast workforce that’s effectively slave labour. There might also be a vast slave army. Those robots will be owned by the likes of Musk and/or by the governments of the major powers. Will they dole out UBI? That depends on who controls the weapons. You’re an absurdly rich person with a private military and you only have to reach out your hand for anything you need. How much money will you throw to the masses to spare yourself the inconvenience of waging continual war on them?
In Whispers Beyond The Stars we used a different template for our future world. Not Roddenberry’s Federation but Ancient Rome. There you have wealth concentrated into the hands of a few, labour (but not warfare) largely carried out by slaves, and UBI in the form of the dole. Bread and circuses keep the people acquiescent while the oligarchs enjoy all the luxury.
What about Elon Musk’s prediction that artificial intelligence will exceed human intelligence by 2031? “There really won't be anything that AI can’t do better than humans apart from being human.” And he thinks (or claims to think, or believes he thinks) that means AI will be in charge: “In the same way that if the difference in intelligence between AI and humans is vastly greater than the difference in intelligence between AI and chimpanzees, it's hard to imagine that the chimpanzees would be in charge.”
Is that so? Intelligent people don’t run this planet. Really they don’t; just take a look at it. The US has a government that opposes vaccination and mRNA research. Russia is drilling for self-replacing oil on the basis of a theory barely less barmy than some of the Nazis’ pseudoscience ideas. Politicians get elected without even trying to make any intelligent arguments, knowing that flattery, lies and hatemongering will stand them in far better stead at the ballot box than reason ever could -- or else they seize power by force and install dictators who are never chosen on the strength of their intellect. Meanwhile the vast majority of smart people have no chance of doing anything with their intelligence because they belong to the two-fifths of humanity that has to make do with 1% of global wealth.
I sound like I’m disdainful of Elon Musk’s theories, and I certainly wouldn’t call him a genius, as Zanny Minton Beddoes has, because I don’t use the term genius so promiscuously. (Shakespeare, Newton, Einstein, maybe a few others; that's it.) Most of my friends are at least as smart as Elon seems to be, and with the added bonus that most of them know what they don't know. But I agree with him when he says, “The most important thing for AI safety is [for it] to be maximally truth-seeking and curious. If that's the case I think it will foster humanity.”
That is, it will be morally better than us; a low bar, as I’ve argued before.
One remark Elon Musk made I found especially revealing: “I've said many times I think work is going to be optional. Maybe a good comparison would be gardening. You don't have to grow vegetables in in your garden. You can go to the store and they're going to be pristine vegetables, or you could grow vegetables in your garden and they will actually be less perfect. Your tomatoes are not going to be as plump and juicy as the ones at the store. They’ll look a little artisanal. But if you go to a friend's house and they make dinner with vegetables from their garden, it's a nice touch.”
I know people who grow their own fruit and vegetables in the garden. They are much, much tastier than anything I can buy in any of the stores that I can afford. So presumably Elon Musk’s cook has access to stores where they can source vegetables even better than that. There’s no better illustration of how detached from everyday reality you can get if you have three-quarters of a trillion dollars.
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