Partgypsy --- Yes it is just crazy talk and has little relevance to our day to day lives. If you read Tim Urban's post on AI, it is interesting that theoretically one day we are living in a normal future and the next day AI has exploded.
He does talk about the threshold of civilizations, as in is there a point that we may no longer survive.
But that really doesn't address the Fermi Paradox because you see even in the 1800s we were emitting radio waves. Sure those waves only travel at the speed of light. So it cold take a billion or so years to arrive here. But with the quadrillion or more possible life supporting planets one would hope that at least one made it to a primitive radio wave level?
Who knows. What we do know is that robotics/computers will be human like powerful in less than 2 decades and then very quickly become much more intelligent.
The impact will be staggeringly huge.
Many jobs that now exist will no longer --- truck drives, car drivers, pilots, warehouse workers, factory workers, farmers (tractor drivers), programmers, etc.. Even McDonald employees will be impacted. WalMart workers? Sorry we only need a few. Wait do we even need stores?
In the US we manufacture twice as much with half as many workers as 10 years ago. Fast forward 10 more years and at that rate we will be manufacturing 6 times as much as 20 years previous with 1/5th the work force.
So yeah, is it that only 15% will need or have jobs?
With robotic cars will individual ownership be a thing of the past. Imagine you just press a button on your phone and within 1 minute a car shows up and takes you where you want to go. It then heads around the corner to pick up the next riders. No driver, no dispatcher, no fossil fuel. We are seeing the beginning of this with Uber.
The number of cars needed or wanted could be 10 times as few. Talk about mass transportation!
The cost for this robotic car transportation service? Perhaps 1/5th of what the average person currently pays for car usage.
With Uber the biggest cost remains the driver's time. Do away with that cost and your cost to operate drops to 70 cents per mile. Add in a solar rechargeable 200 mpg equivalent car and now your at 20 cents per mile. Factor in that there would be 1/10 the number of wrecks and insurance costs are irrelevant. So maybe 15 cents per mile?
So yeah my 12,000 annual miles might only cost me $150 per month. And I would be super safe.
I'm possibly very wrong. But hoping I'm very right and that we have the will power to take our car transportation to the next level quickly.
