How AI could create the world’s biggest problems (article by Zershaaneh Qureshi)

About this episode

The episode discusses the potential transformative impact of artificial intelligence on society, including both its benefits and existential risks.

Imagine you’re living 15,000 years ago. Your people are hunter-gatherers and you sleep under the stars. If someone told you humans would one day build cities with millions of people, fly through the air, or carry all human knowledge in their pockets, you couldn’t even begin to picture what they meant... Yet here we are. How did our lives change so far beyond recognition? The story is complex, but there’s a rough pattern. A few times in history, some radical breakthrough in technology — like the development of the plough and the steam engine — has led to a wave of productivity, innovation, and social change that ultimately reshaped the world. Now we’re on the cusp of a huge new breakthrough: artificial intelligence that can meet or exceed human capabilities across a wide range of tasks. This could bring another era of transformation. There could be an explosion of intelligence and innovation, and a whole new population of digital beings. And with this, civilisation could see changes at least as profound as those brought about by industrialisation or the rise of agriculture — but instead of taking hundreds or thousands of years to unfold, this time around the world could become…

People in this episode

Host: The 80,000 Hours team

Topics covered

• artificial intelligence
• technological breakthroughs
• social change
• productivity
• innovation
• existential risks

Keywords

• AI
• human capabilities
• civilization
• innovation
• global problems
• existential risks
• transformation

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