Thus the whole UBI thing. The government would pass it because they want to be re elected and well don't want the economy to collapse...

An economic pivot due to automation replacing jobs wouldn't be the same as a normal economic downturn. It would be a massive increase in production since that's the only way jobs would be replaced and that would generate huge wealth that would likely enable significant demand. We passed basically a UBI (minus the universal part...) bill for COVID for non-essential workers who couldn't work, I would be shocked if we didn't pass a true UBI if automation was really starting to replace massive numbers of jobs. That UBI would generate far more demand especially for anything not automated (which would make it risky if most everything wasn't automated due to inflation).

We also just need blue collar labor today really badly so thanks for joining the workforce.

My wife works in biochemistry labs (as a PhD) and they seem a ways away from being fully automated though perhaps the actual experiments will be automated (would honestly make me feel better if she didn't need to directly work with dangerous drugs, chemicals, and pathogens where exposure can be lethal, though obviously she takes safety precautions).

Large industrial scale manufacturing is primarily automated, but running smaller scale tests are still highly manual including even the pipetting. I think this will change in the coming years, but I still suspect we're a ways away from not needing a PhD overseeing the projects or coming up with new experiments/hypotheses.

By the time AI can do all of that well I expect automation to have hit most careers.

Similarly unique labor is also a ways away. Coming from a structural engineering background, if you can get into old building renovations that may be the longest standing field that needs human labor since most of the time there aren't drawing packages or anything for those so it's really hard to automate since you need to deal with a lot of possibilities. New construction (especially commercial and industrial since architecture isn't as critical there) will be the first to be automated out of construction.

I suspect many people in old age really want to live, they just don't want to live in old age. Meaning if they had the opportunity to become 20 again most of them would take it.

I honestly suspect the simulated biology in combination with delivery tools made from synthetic biology (aka artificially programmed cells) which can delivery nearly any kind of package including CRISPR, drugs, etc... to a specific cellular target (even down to the behavior of specific cell types) anywhere and/or everywhere in the body. We're developing that kind of synthetic biology already, and in some cased like Car T Cells its already in use and has been proven to be extremely effective. We're currently working on making it a lot cheaper. With those tools and a fully understood genome, bioelectrical signaling, and epigenome we would be able to do nearly anything and be masters of biology to the point of potentially being able to design and grow new types of body parts and organs or add new features to those that already exist in living people. First we'll be able to do things like grow a tail or horns though or adjust body proportions (no more plastic surgery).

I agree. No one knows their life expectancy until well they're as old as their life expectancy (whatever it ends up being).

I'm curious about this. Will we be able to extend health span before we will be able to repair age related damage and therefore reach LEV?

Most of the stuff I've seen that doesn't genuinely repair age related damage doesn't really do much if anything to extend human lifespan. For instance even if we cure all cancer, life expectancy would only increase by about 2-3 years due to other causes of death like dementia, heart disease, strokes, etc... (Obviously that's worth it, but it's not nearly the same utopia society as some think it could be)

The only thing I've seen that genuinely adds years to human health is reducing stress, having friendships, exercising, eating healthy, avoiding pollution, and making consistent good choices to reduce accidental risk (seat belts, bike helmets, etc...). The standard being healthy stuff.

To really move the needle a lot it seems to me that we need to be able to heal age related damage pretty much everywhere. I believe we are getting to that point within an exponential curve, but it will still likely require synthetic biology delivery systems and a great understanding of our genetics (understanding what Yamanaka factors are truly doing) and much more (many things that each need substantial break throughs).

I believe AI and automation will help a lot with accelerating scientific discovery on this path and we may be shocked by what happens within the next 10 to 20 years.

I personally don't believe any of us can predict further out than 10 years and even anything beyond 3 to 5 is a pretty massive stretch.

I agree, though I also think we'll still want to build with new materials since we'll want to expand and increase the standard of living and such, but yes we'll be able to recycle a lot (or everything) so we won't need as much and won't have nearly the same environmental impact.

Maybe? But if it is it will likely be one of the last things automated. General purpose robotics that are humanoid or can do all the same tasks as a human are likely the most complicated to make. With that being said no one truly knows where AI and therefore robotics will be in 20 years and it's definitely possible.

I wouldn't worry about job security though, if that were to happen we would likely have had UBI or something for a long while due to other mass automation (trucking, manufacturing, generative design, creative, etc...).

Even if you can't make everything on site, the cost of shipping and resources will still be just the cost of those robots and energy (which would also be built up by robotics and if we had that level of robotic production it's likely that fusion has been built out so energy would be near free), and then the cost to make those robotics would also be the cost of the robots that built them.

If robots build robots which can then build everything else including general contractor work (aka general purpose robotics) without the need for any human bottleneck then you start this absurdly powerful compounding growth trend that drives the effective cost of anything to near 0. The only limits would be land and raw materials. Land could be optimized if labor is effectively free by building vertically (vertical farms, lab grown meat, etc...). Raw materials could be mined from asteroids if we have said level of full automation and fusion propulsion driven reusable spacecraft (it's unlikely we would do this otherwise since the cost to get said materials is prohibitively expensive compared to just mining them on earth).

So could a robot at one point become general enough to do all the work of construction? Of course it can. will that happen in 20 years? No one knows. Should you be concerned? Probably not since at that point the whole economy would have to be rewritten and well we'd have plenty of abundance for everyone.

I mean, they've been reporting a lot of major breakthroughs recently it's just that it takes time and steady advances (breakthroughs) for it to be ready and it's also not something 99% of people will regularly interact with. It'll be more like cloud computing and servers.

I personally more look forward to Microsoft incorporating generative AI into Microsoft office. It could be awesome for Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Outlook, Teams, etc.. Will be curious if they could even compete with Adobe with a generative AI illustrator and graphic editor added to the office suite.

I suspect google will also incorporate generative AI into google docs, but office is still far more powerful today and more commonly used.

Search will be neat, though need models to be able determine fact from fiction and not make up information it doesn't definitively "know" before its really useful. Curious how long it will take to do that.

It also doesn't even matter when automation happens. I'm a practicing mechanical design engineer. I fully expect one day my work will be automated and before that highly augmented, but by the time my work isn't needed we'll have so much societal wealth and productivity that UBI and such will be easily affordable and generous.

The only thing that matters is that your job isn't one of the first to be fully automated (not just augmented) before the major wave of automation occurs and if it is that you can transfer to another. As long as your job is automated with the major wave of automation then you'll be fine since society will adapt to it and we'll have the resources to easily do so.

Non-jokingly, construction general contractors that work on renovating old buildings will likely have work for a while and be one of the last replaced. Similarly surgeons (especially more general surgeons), hair cutters, ER doctors, really any physical labor job that requires a high level of flexibility in tasks especially in higher risk scenarios. They will all be augmented with AI tools, but likely not entirely replaced till most others are replaced as well. Anything that requires a professional license may also take time for society to not require a licensed overseer of an AI for things like signing off on designs, diagnoses, prescriptions, etc..

I suspect for new construction we'll be able to make it more automated by designing joints and methods in an easier to automate manner as well as incorporate more factory automation in the build process. For this reason it could be that in time old houses end up being a luxury commodity that wealthy people collect similar to old cars. However, hopefully that collecting is limited enough to not limit housing construction so that we can better meet demand (unlike today). In not that long it could easily be cheaper to tear down an old house and modernize it rather than renovate or repair it (assuming local building regulations allow you to).

I suspect all diseases will be curable through biotech and AI methods long before we have large scale atomically precise manufacturing capabilities.

>The question is when would self-driving systems be proven and accessible. I think by 2040.

I think sometime between 2028 and 2040. Depending on how hard snow and rain are to solve and how challenging scaling is (my guess is scaling will simply be driven by rate of manufacturing which means 3 years to fill market penetration after full self driving is solved).

I honestly think it will be solved faster than some believe due to exponential rates of data collection for autonomous fleets in combination with better computing capabilities and better AI architecture. I still place it in the late 2020s at the earliest though for mass market and well later than that if we're talking reliable snow driving, etc...

A full self driving car is far likelier to see a human and drive at speeds where it can stop prior in time to avoid a collusion at all times. An autonomous car doesn't get emotional, it doesn't get sleepy, it doesn't get distracted, and it has constant 360 degree range of view and is generating rather accurate behavioral predictive models now, and can always know its stopping distance and more.

I 100% would trust a PROVEN self-driving system over any human any day.

Honestly I just hope it doesn't become another arr futurology. I always find when subs get too large they get more and more filled with doomers and then I always have to find a new sub.

Longevity escape velocity. The point at which we add a year of healthy life every year.

Similar people to these geniuses also predicted Airplanes will take millions of years to develop back in 1903...

https://bigthink.com/pessimists-archive/air-space-flight-impossible/

These people are always vastly overconfident for no reason. Maybe if we had to design a computer exactly the same as a brain it would take a hundred years, but we don't, we can use vastly more power than the brain to match its computational power, we can use far larger volumes of computational area since we aren't restricted to a skull and birth canal.

We made airplanes by simply throwing more power and human engineering at the problem, I suspect we'll make AI similarly and if flight was similar AGI will happen within 2 decades, far faster than even 2 average lifespans of hunter gatherers let alone LEV humans...

I'm not sure that was AI. They sequenced the genome of COVID rather quickly, which is a rather small genome. They then picked a protein target and grabbed the RNA for it and then threw that into their mRNA vaccine system that was already developed. I don't think they used much AI in that process.

That and campaign for allowing more housing developments, control of land and preventing development making housing unaffordable is one way wealthier people are already hurting the majority.

I agree 100% and am a huge advocate for heavy timber construction. It won't move the needle enough to not need direct air capture, but I 100% agree that we should do it.

We can also have part of the life time plan for said buildings be to bury the carbon at their end of life.

High rise heavy timber in my opinion is the most desirable building type out there. It has the added benefit of increased density housing for that carbon emissions reduction as well.

We literally just have to bury it and refill the oil wells and then cap them. We can do that with anything that grabs carbon from the atmosphere whether it be trees or direct air capture technology.

Reading the article it includes everything even trees and all of nature.

Pretty confident these numbers are wrong.

https://www.iea.org/fuels-and-technologies/carbon-capture-utilisation-and-storage

We're currently capturing about 45 megatons annually.

https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2021/co2-emissions

Meanwhile globally we emit 31.5 gigatons or 31,500 megatons.

That means we need to scale up 700X to capture it all. We also want to scale up beyond that to become net negative as well to reverse climate change even.

This sounds like a lot, but most plants today are experimental development plants so we haven't really begun scaling it. For comparison in the USA alone we have almost 12,000 grid scale power plants, so scaling to 10s of thousands of carbon capture plants which is what it would take to reverse climate change isn't actually that infeasible at all. There's currently a ton of money flowing into developing carbon capture.

Obviously reducing emissions will also go a long way, but we do need to go carbon negative to reverse damage.

Most importantly trees release carbon when they decompose so we really have to bury it underground, which means we need to pay people to do that. Trees alone are not a solution to climate change unless you plan on burying the tree deep underground to capture its carbon.

Edit: I see from reading the article it's referring to all capture methods including all trees, land management, etc... Things that don't easily scale sadly. Meanwhile new technology (carbon capture facilities) only accounts for 0.1% of that.

We'll see I suppose. I'm skeptical about any AR that we can make today. Haha