The economic growth of the last 200 years has been astounding, but I think we're at an even bigger inflection point now. If you can have AI that is better than human experts in every field, and you can deploy that AI at enormous scale, you can have things like a brilliant doctor, lawyer, financial advisor, whatever, available to everyone on the planet. And what that means for human wellbeing, for eliminating poverty, for doing things that we've never been able to do, I think is just difficult to overstate.
The thing that I keep coming back to is that I think we're at this remarkable moment where if you look at the charts of what AI can do — the capability curves — and you look at what still needs to happen for us to change the trajectory of the world in a really fundamental way, I think we're going to live to see scientific progress compress by 100x. I think we're going to see the standard of living for people go up dramatically. I think we're going to figure out how to make the things that matter — energy, food, healthcare, education — cheap and abundant.
I think we may be approaching a moment where many instances of AI are out running experiments, doing the work of scientists, and humanity could potentially compress decades of scientific progress into just a few years. We could run experiments to defeat diseases that have plagued us for millennia, independently develop and test solutions to mental health crises, and actively drive economic growth in a way that could lift billions out of poverty.
The thing that I find most interesting and surprising about the current moment is that I think most people would say that the most impactful thing that's ever happened to humanity is starting to happen, and yet most people don't really believe it. They know it, but they don't believe it in their gut.
I think we will look back on this moment as the single most important turning point in the history of human civilization. Truly, not hyperbole. The transition from a world where there was a fixed amount of intelligence and energy to a world where both of those are effectively unlimited is so profound that I don't think we are able to fully conceptualize what it will mean.
I think AI is going to be the most transformative technology in human history, and I think it will compress potentially 100 years of scientific progress into the next decade or so. I think it will defeat diseases that have plagued us forever. I think it will help lift many people out of poverty. I think it will dramatically increase the quality of life for most people on Earth.
The thing that I keep coming back to is that intelligence and energy are the two inputs to wealth creation. And we have, in AI, a way to potentially radically expand the amount of intelligence available to humanity. If we can do that, and if we can find a way to get cheap, abundant energy, I think the world looks totally different in 20 to 30 years than most people are imagining.
1mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
