This argument gives a 35% chance of AI "taking over" (granted this does not mean extinction) this century: https://www.foxy-scout.com/wwotf-review/#underestimating-ris.... The argument consists of 6 steps, assigning probabilities to each step, and multiplying the probabilities.
This would be true if the only way to improve healthcare was to throw more money at it. The US could have the best healthcare system if it chose to spend those 12% on something else than pharma's pockets.
There isn't some simple silver bullet here. While the US ends up subsidizing other industrialized countries for prescription drugs (and that should be stopped), it is a small percentage of overall healthcare costs:
>While prescription drug costs only accounted for 8 percent of total U.S. healthcare spending in 2020, the price of such drugs has risen substantially over the last few decades. ... The U.S. spends twice as much on prescription drugs as other comparatively wealthy nations, on average.
American healthcare is unusually expensive. We spend more public money as a percentage of GDP than most other developed countries on it. Clearly something else is going on beyond money spent.
I can't say if it's correct or not, but here's an argument [1] that I've heard multiple times:
> Pharmaceutical breakthroughs are financed by the high prices paid by American patients (and backed by abundant venture capital); government-run health systems in Europe then bulk-buy the same drugs for much less. Europe has had some successes—German companies were among those pioneering mrna vaccines—but most of the cutting-edge research in science and technology is done at universities and companies elsewhere.
European drug-makers benefit from those high prices in the US, too. But anyway, I’ve heard that only 11-14% of new drugs are therapeutically important. The rest compete with pre-existing treatments, which I believe is how generic forms bring costs down. I’m ok with universities doing this; bringing costs down does save the lives of poor people.
The government doesn’t need to and shouldn’t spend a dime on housing. It’s up to each state to just make it possible to build more homes. If the government can somehow compel that then great. We can fix the housing crisis and grow GDP at the same time.
This is just the beginning and we don't know what will happen. Some people will say creative destruction is happening and people will find other jobs. They may equate this to the horse drivers finding other jobs at the beginning of the XXth century.
The truth is we don't know. People that will lose their jobs may find other jobs or not. Maybe it's harder to reinvent oneself now. Maybe a lot of people will truly suffer because of AI.
I find very hard to know with certainty what will happen, who will remain unharmed, and who will struggle but make it through, but change is coming.
At least in the early 20th century there were a ton of jobs one could pivot to that weren't too difficult to train up for.
That isn't the case anymore. The only jobs that will remain will be skilled blue collar jobs and for how long is anyone's guess until we start getting robots with limbic dexterity and power systems to rival man.
This will speed up as well. My boss was looking for a robot arm a few years ago and got quotes; the quote for the cheapest one was not in the budget. He now bought 2 for far less that are really excellent and indeed, again, replacing real people.
We should prepare for it though. All the existential stuff with AIs killing humans I don’t think is the biggest danger. No work and no money is far more urgent. Even if it doesn’t happen, it can happen, so why not assume it will and change tactics when it’s clear it’s far more sunnier?
Well yes, that’s the best outcome; infinite energy which means infinite everything and, with AGI, infinite intelligence. Done properly, there is no worry; we will live in paradise. No needs for ads, wars or money. But it will depend on who owns it, no?
It’s hard to prepare when we don’t have a good idea of what will happen (and I agree with the GP that we don’t at this point). Also, as usual, politics will only react after the fact.
> Germany was especially vulnerable to the withdrawal of Russian natural gas supplies—the country used a disproportionate amount of natural gas for its heavy industry and gas-powered home heating systems, and in 2021, 55% of German natural gas consumption came from Russia
So much reliance on a potential enemy was a huge mistake. Germany should've foreseen that in the span of say 40 years it was likely there would be a major conflict with Russia.
All prediction markets were estimating at fairly high this possibility and the fact that Germany didn't realize this and course-corrected is surprising to say the least.
It's not really a matter for foresight when Germany is going trough with shutting down all nuclear energy while the neighbours are starting to build new ones.
> Quinney should be entitled to compensation from the state. It isn’t immediately clear what the final number will be but it will stretch into the hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.
Hundreds of thousands for eight years in jail, decades of angst, and a broken family ...
The fact that bureaucrats err on side of minimizing deaths caused by experiments is just a consequence of deaths being caused by experiments being unequivocally trivial to prove.
Meanwhile finding out the number of deaths caused by extra caution and delaying the experiment requires a calculation, and then a very lengthy blog post to be communicated.
Bureaucrats don't care about the second kind of deaths because they can hardly be linked to their actions. Now the first kind of deaths are directly their responsibility. And guess what, they can be avoided with a flick of a pen.
Jobs may even be outsourced from the cities to cheaper areas in US. Not many countries allow firing at will, and apparently this is needed every ~10 years for 20% of the staff.
