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're at an extraordinary moment in history where the tools to solve problems that have been stuck for 100 years, or maybe never been solvable, are becoming available to us. And I think in the next few decades, we will make more scientific progress than in all of human history combined.
The thing that I sort of think about a lot is that the history of human progress is really the history of energy and intelligence. If you think about what gets better over time, what increases quality of life, it comes down to how much energy and intelligence we have access to. And we seem to be on the cusp of not running short of either of those things.
I think we are at the beginning of what may be the most transformative period in human history. The economic growth we've had over the past few centuries—which felt fast—may look very slow compared to what's coming. And I think we have a chance to lift a billion people out of poverty, to cure diseases, to solve mental health problems at scale, in ways that have seemed impossible.
The robots are going to do the things that we need to survive. And then humans get to do the things that we want to do. I don't know what that world looks like exactly, but it seems like a much better world than the current one where many people can't get great medical care, can't get great education, can't afford the things they need.
1mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
