Source The New York Times · Published · Open the original ↗
Capability
This Is the Good Scenario?
We may not want it to, but A.I. is asking us how to live.
Imagine Americans were offered this deal: Hit a big red button and China becomes the world’s first hyperpower. It rockets past the United States in technical sophistication, manufacturing capacity and wealth generation. China becomes so technologically advanced, and its human and robotic work force so huge, that Americans are left with only the dimmest comprehension of what is playing out on the economic, scientific and perhaps even geopolitical frontier.
But the rewards for disempowering ourselves are magnificent. The global economy booms, and Americans grow richer than ever before. We are given new cures and cheap energy and wondrous entertainments. Machines perform our labor and mood-enhancing drugs protect our psyches. We need not struggle, perhaps we need not even work, to live lives, long lives, of luxury and ease.
There, then, is the trade: Cede control and much that we have struggled for can be ours. But control, once gone, is gone.
The opening of the report, quoted unchanged from The New York Times. The full text continues at the source.