I think about this a lot when I hear the more extreme techno-optimists talking about an AI-driven 'world of plenty' where 'money has lot all meaning' and the main issue is 'how to spend all our free time'. Almost exclusively, those predictions come from people already living an incredibly privileged life by global standards - and certainly a life where the prospect of water shortages or long periods without access to electricity isn't something they've had to consider seriously any time recently.
Advances in technology often help to find solutions to problems, but they create new ones at the same time. Amongst the many far-fetched claims made about the latest generation of AI, the idea that it might improve standards of living in absolute terms for those in the world with the current lowest standard of living is plausible; the idea that it might create a 'techno-communist' utopia of abundance for those currently at the sharp end of global inequality is deeply implausible.
I think about this a lot when I hear the more extreme techno-optimists talking about an AI-driven 'world of plenty' where 'money has lot all meaning' and the main issue is 'how to spend all our free time'. Almost exclusively, those predictions come from people already living an incredibly privileged life by global standards - and certainly a life where the prospect of water shortages or long periods without access to electricity isn't something they've had to consider seriously any time recently.
Advances in technology often help to find solutions to problems, but they create new ones at the same time. Amongst the many far-fetched claims made about the latest generation of AI, the idea that it might improve standards of living in absolute terms for those in the world with the current lowest standard of living is plausible; the idea that it might create a 'techno-communist' utopia of abundance for those currently at the sharp end of global inequality is deeply implausible.
lot we can do to bridge the gaps