Some thoughts on current trends and their societal implications: If autonomous vehicles become commonplace this obviously has economic implications for all those industries which rely upon the unreliability of human drivers, and also for those workers whose jobs is oriented around driving. Insurance companies will either have to adapt to this change or face extinction. Also in the UK local government organisations make substantial revenues from traffic fines, which will dry up as human drivers are replaced by robots. These organisations will need to find alternative sources of revenue. Also a substantial proportion of police activities are taken up with monitoring traffic and enforcing traffic laws, most of which will become redundant.
For optimal performance traffic may need to have some element of centralised control, in a similar manner to how traffic lights are coordinated within a city. This may not need AGI but does involve some fancy optimisation and scheduling problems, capable of running in an emergent way as the system changes dynamically. Amusingly I was listening to a radio programme earlier in which it was proposed that in order to improve road safety young people should be taught about safe driving at school. Unfortunately driving as a skill will probably become almost entirely redundant within the working lifetimes of current school children. Humans in the workforce will be under siege on a variety of fronts, caught in a pincer movement between economics and the advancing wave of automation. Blue collar workers will see new competition from "foreign" labour in the form of teleoperated machinery controlled by workers from emerging economies hired casually at ultra low cost using novel internet based methods, and eventually even these low paid workers will not be able to compete against fully automated AGI-based systems. Here automation will ride on the back of human teleoperation, learning the skills which humans deploy and progressively augmenting and replacing them as they increase in competence. For white collar workers life will not be a bowl of cherries either. Digital computers were originally primarily intended to replace white collar workers (armies of human "computers" carrying out laborious pencil and paper operations for code breaking purposes), and with the introduction of the first AGIs the scope of white collar work which can be automated will increase at an astonishing pace In the initial stages I expect to see a few entrepreneurs setting up businesses which consist entirely of one or more AGI systems and who then compete directly against organisations traditionally based upon human labour, such as law firms, insurance companies, some government agencies and banks. Essentially any business whose main function is the creation, processing or storage of information is amenable to joining the growing ranks of "zero employee" companies. Just like the captains of industry from earlier generations these entrepreneurs will not care whether their systems are friendly or not provided that they are convenient and cost effective. I also expect to see the emergence of software systems which might be called "management in a box". Here an off the shelf system can be used to completely automate the process of managing a company, including taking complex high level strategic, marketing, ethical and investment decisions normally the preserve of expensive and experienced human directors. Charity organisations may prominently advertise the fact that that they have reached "administration free" status and governments will eagerly seek to influence or regulate the activities of these systems, partly in response to public anxieties but mainly in order to further extend their sphere of economic control. I also anticipate AGIs emerging as personalities in their own right. I expect to see pop stars, authors, comedians, scientists, and maybe even politicians who are essentially just AGI systems with an online persona presented to the public. In video or audio broadcasts, or virtual world appearances these characters may appear highly convincing, and the fact that they are computer generated may not be immediately apparent. There may be incidents where what were believed to be human celebrities are unmasked or "outed" as AGIs. I imagine a series of enigmatic papers being submitted to scientific journals, with the author later being revealed as non-human. On 08/11/2007, Benjamin Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi all, > > Just a reminder that we are soliciting papers on > "Sociocultural, Ethical and Futurological Implications of Artificial General > Intelligence" > to be presented at a workshop following the AGI-08 conference in Memphis > (US) in March. > > http://www.agi-08.org/workshop/ > > The submission deadline is about a week from now, but we could let it slip > by a few days > if you ask us nicely. > > We are looking for well-thought-out, well-written contributions that take > into account > the likely realities of AGI technology as it develops. Attendees in the > workshop will > be a mix of academic and industry AI researchers, and individuals from other > walks of life > with an interest in the broader implications of AGI technology. > > Thanks, > Ben Goertzel > ________________________________ > This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email > To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: > http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=63050774-98d0cc
