We may be approaching one of the most significant turning points in human history. A strong consensus of AI researchers, Nobel laureates, tech leaders, and public officials believe that highly impactful and powerful AI systems - possibly even superintelligence - could arrive within our lifetime, possibly within the next 5-10 years.
It sounds like science fiction, doesn't it? But these predictions come from the people building these systems, the scientists who pioneered the technology, and leaders who've studied its trajectory. They're telling us that AI is improving faster than expected, that recursive self-improvement is on the horizon, and that the implications - both extraordinary and concerning - demand our attention now.
[AI] will be comparable with the industrial revolution. Perhaps even bigger than the Industrial Revolution.
Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.
[AI operating at the level of a junior engineer is] probably possible in the next year-ish.
[by 2035] we are definitely going to have digital superintelligence as a collaborator for all of us. That is going to be a reality.
[Powerful AI could be like] a country of geniuses in a datacenter.
[AI could] wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years.
It's going to be 10 times bigger than the Industrial Revolution, and maybe 10 times faster.
We are still profoundly underreacting, and we are dangerously underprepared. The terms of what it is like to be a human are about to change in ways that rival the transformations of the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution, only much more quickly.
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