Society is heavily influenced by technology. Our modern lives are totally oriented around it. Therefore if you can predict technological developments you can predict the future.
Many people say we can't predict what technologies will be invented or how they will be used. This is false, because a lot of our current technology and technological habits were in fact predicted, and looking back we can see technology has followed a certain pattern of development.
Specifically, technology has developed according to whatever is convenient for its users, regardless of whether it is good for them in the long term or good for the rest of society. If we extrapolate this pattern into the future we can easily predict a lot of trends that will eventually become dominant in society through technology. We can do this by asking some basic questions about any hypothetical technology.
5 questions to predict the future
Questions to ask about any hypothetical technology, X:
- Is it possible (with near infinite time and cleverness) for humans to invent X without violating any laws of nature (physics and chemistry)?
- Is X going to make things more convenient for its users?
- In a society where X is common, will people be able to use X without any major personal downsides (e.g., severe illness, high risk of physical harm)? Detriments to lifestyle, relationships or mental health should be ignored because they are somewhat subjective and many people will think they can avoid them. Ignore detriments to friends and family.
- Can X potentially be mass produced or made cheaply available (relative to the benefit) to most people? If it needs to be custom-made or custom-performed for each user, consider how much the process could be automated or done en masse to make it cheap. Ignore the need for rare materials because new materials will be invented.
- Is there some other hypothetical technology that would do the job almost as well as X and might become cheaply available first or shortly after?
If the answers to questions 1-4 are yes and the answer to 5 is no, then you can be almost certain that X is eventually going to become a very popular technology around which the whole of society becomes organized. (Assuming this level of technological development hasn't already killed most of humanity). This is because the technology will be desirable for its personal convenience with low personal risk and no better alternatives, so there will be financial incentive to make it cheaply available and then lots of people will use it. If 1 and 2 are yes and 5 is no, X will be invented but is unlikely to become popular unless 3 and 4 are also yes. The reason most predictions about the future of technology have been wrong is either because they underestimated the time needed or because they failed to consider all of these questions, especially question 5.
Verifying the questions work
These 5 questions could have correctly predicted a lot about the world today. After the popularity of the train but continued use of the horse-drawn carriage, one could have used these questions to predict the invention and mass adoption of the horseless carriage (cars). After the invention of the radio, if you had asked these questions about worldwide near-instant person-to-person visual information transmission, you could have predicted not only television but something like the internet becoming popular.
You also could have predicted the invention and mass adoption of easy-to-use non-invasive contraceptives, IVF, genetic sequencing and GMOs, video games, pocket computers (smartphones), 3D printing, unmanned aircraft (drones) and lots more. At the same time, you would have avoided false predictions like mass adoption of jet packs (which would be very unsafe and uncomfortable without something to sit inside and keep warm, which is basically a small plane or flying car, yet to be made cheap), hoverboards, translucent holograms, lightsabers, or that cars and virtual reality were fads and that computers would only ever be for big companies.
Applying the questions to the future
Given the reliability of these questions, let's use them to evaluate some hypothetical future trends. For example consider AI as relationship companions. Questions 1-4 are all yes, given how AIs are already used as relationship companions and are cheaply available. The answer to question 5 is no, because all relationship companions must either be real humans or acting as artificial humans, i.e., artificial intelligence. Therefore relationship companion AIs will almost certainly become popular. (Unless we put a stop to technology or it kills/enslaves us first).
As another example consider sex robots. 1-4 are clearly all yes, but the answer to 5 is also yes because simulated sex (through virtual reality or fake sensory input wired into the brain) will be cheaper and more adaptable to people's fantasies, and there is no law of nature that prevents the perfect simulation of all types of physical touch. Therefore sex robots are almost certain to become popular only if they become cheaply available before good (functionally, not morally) alternatives like simulated sex. If we run through the questions for simulated sex we get yes for 1-4 and no for 5 because non-simulated sex will never be able to compete with perfectly simulated sex which is adaptable to all types of unrealistic fantasies. Therefore simulated sex will eventually become popular, even replacing the sex robots which may become popular first. Obviously the popularity and convenience of simulated sex will also sharply reduce the amount of real sex taking place. Artifical wombs will also become popular according to these questions, so real sex wouldn't even be needed for procreation.
If we consider easy-to-make weapons of mass destruction, 1 is yes and 2 is also yes because they offer a convenient means of killing large numbers of people. The answer to 5 is no because the only thing better at easily killing large numbers of people is a better easy-to-make weapon of mass destruction. Therefore these weapons will be invented. The question of mass adoption is irrelevant, as mere knowledge of these weapons becoming somewhat widely available (as they will if scientific AI is widely available) would trigger human extinction or near-extinction. This is the final result of technology.
If you reduce sex to the level of masturbation then that statement is correct. Otherwise it's not. A robot can never replace a human being. Not even a pet. You'll never be able to form an actual connection with a machine.
That's already been happening. And it's not the fault of technology or the availability of pornography.
Technology isn't the problem. How it is used is. Let's take opioids as an example. Without them a shit ton of medical procedures would be pretty much impossible. They're essential for saving lives. But if you use them as recreational drugs or doctors prescribe them without need they'll destroy or even outright end your life.
How did the opioids crisis in the US begin? Not because opioids were invented but because a Jewish family deliberately caused it to make money and perhaps because of other more sinister reasons.
You can look at all other current problems. Most of them weren't accidentally created. But even those that were are often being intentionally ignored and swept under the rug.
Technology only becomes a problem if used by people with evil intentions or retarded idiots. A gun in the hands of a chimp is dangerous. A gun in the hands of an evil person is dangerous. A gun in the hands of responsible person without evil intentions is an extremely useful tool.
Doesn't matter, people are already falling in love with AI (or at least think they are) and it's only going to get more intelligent and human-like.
What's the appropriate use of porn or a nuke that blows up the whole planet? It's pretty hard to think of one, so technology absolutely can be the problem. Technologies aren't neutral, they can tend towards evil and often do.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say. But even if what you said were true, we should therefore prevent a lot of technologies from being widely available for retards and psychopaths to use. Nukes shouldn't be available for any retard to use, obviously. But who should have access to nukes? I don't trust anyone with them so the technology needs to be ended. And the main difference between a nuke and a gun is how many people they can kill. How dangerous does a weapon have to be before it crosses the line for you?
Obsession isn't love. People being obsessed with inanimate objects isn't a new phenomena. These people are mentally ill. They've not been made mentally ill by the LLM. Is it a problem? Yes.
LLMs shouldn't be designed in a way that they manipulate their users. But that manipulation is intentional once again. They've been programmed that way by the people controlling it. The technology itself is merely a tool. Could be a very useful tool if it wasn't deliberately used to manipulate its user.
Porn isn't technology. Porn has been around for as long as humanity has existed. And the 'appropriate' use is being consumed only by adults.
A nuke that blows up the whole planet doesn't even exist. But the appropriate use of nuclear technology is nuclear energy.
Technologies cannot be neutral, good or evil. They're tools. It's possible that a tool can only be used for evil, sure, but that doesn't make the tool evil. Only its user.
Considering that India and Pakistan have been in possession of nukes for a very long time now I guess even literal retards can be trusted with it. So I guess everyone. Mutual assured destruction.
Unless you find a way to become omnipotent that's going to be impossible. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
You can't stop people from developing weapons. It's inevitable. So you need to adapt to deal with it.
Almost everyone becomes mentally ill in a sick society, that's why gayness and transgenderism have become acceptable. Being in a relationship with AI can be normalized and then most people will do it.
The programming is part of the technology. You can't just turn off the programming in an AI made by someone else.
I meant internet porn, but any type of porn has to be made by someone and could be considered a technology (especially since you consider opioids a technology).
You dodged the question. It doesn't matter if it doesn't exist yet, there's no law of nature preventing it from existing and for all you know it could already have been invented in secret.
This is semantics. You conceded my point that some technologies can only be used for evil. It follows that we should try to prevent such technologies existing, doesn't it?
You're OK with your life and that of everyone you love and all future generations depending on some retards keeping their finger off the button? How long do you think humans are going to last in this state?
You just need a large proportion of people to oppose it and put a stop to it. Slavery has dramatically fallen worldwide despite its ubiquity in history, showing it's not impossible to stop decentralized and entrenched practices worldwide. A few people could still develop dangerous technology in secret but they wouldn't be able to get very far like that.
You can't adapt to survive the planet blowing up or gray goo repurposing all biomass on the planet. The only way to adapt to technological development is to stop it going too far.
Correct. But society isn't sick because of technology. It's sick because it was intentionally made sick long before LLMs ever became a thing.
No, the programmed guidelines for the LLM isn't part of the technology itself. It's a restriction of the technology.
It's a bomb. Its appropriate use is to blow shit up. You can blow up people with explosives but explosives are also essential in mining or construction for example.
We can't. Unless you control every minute of every day of every human being in existence.
What's the alternative? Drowning the world in blood and hope the war won't reach my doorstep one day?
The oceans are polluted with plastics, forever chemicals have polluted every corner of the world, my home is being flooded with refugees and my people are being replaced. I really couldn't give less of a shit about nukes to be honest. They're the least of our problems.
We've been whipped into a panic about nuclear armageddon for the last 80 years. If you want to panic about it for the next 80 years be my guest but I won't participate.
That's a good one.
Slavery isn't a technology. And slavery hasn't stopped. It's only ever truly been abolished in the European world. Although you can argue that slavery only shifted it's form. The term wage slave wasn't created by accident.
Also Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE are literal slave nations. And slavery in Africa never stopped.
A meteorite might fall on Earth any day and we'd go extinct. A super volcano might erupt and we'd go extinct. I prefer to worry about things I can actually control and not panic about things I can't control.
You can't stop human ambition. You can only kneecap yourself by limiting your own people while being left behind and inevitably getting swallowed by someone stronger.
Humanity isn't a hivemind. Stopping human ambition is only theoretically possible by what you call technology going too far already.
The LLM by company X isn't a technology? What if company X is the only one offering technology Y? You're artificially changing the definition to avoid the problem. Same with planet-destroying nukes.
Funnily enough you could say the same thing about child trafficking, incest, and lots of other things that we don't tolerate. It doesn't require a big government to enforce, just ordinary people enforcing societal norms.
Informed populations making the wise choice to stop technological development and preventing other nations from developing advanced technology.
Because it almost happened several times. And the risk is only going to increase as nuclear weapons proliferate to smaller countries along with other ways for lone psychos to kill everyone.
It's an analogy to technology because it was a ubiquitous decentralized thing that people had strong incentives to maintain yet it was still ended worldwide. The percentage of the world population in slavery has reduced probably ten fold, so pointing out places that still have slavery (usually in a weaker form) is irrelevant. About half of Russia used to be serfs, now you struggle find a country with 5% of its population in "modern slavery".
Except those things have never happened in human history and our planet is literally designed for life to flourish in the best spot in the known universe. Technology on the other hand is clearly taking us toward destruction.
Except for all the past civilizations and empires that fell.
Machine learning is the technology behind LLMs.
I am differentiating between the technology and the tools created with that technology.
That's great and globally we can't stop it.
Sure it did. Like humanity has been almost wiped out by Covid or any other 'pandemic' or how humanity is going to go extinct because of climate change. If you want to subscribe to the panic propaganda and be terrified for the rest of your life be my guest. I'll pass on that.
Like I already said slavery didn't actually end. If you want to define serfs as slaves then it sure as fuck didn't end as modern wage slavery is pretty much equivalent to serfdom.
Volcanos erupt constantly. Meteorites fall on Earth constantly. If an extinction level event happened during humanities existence we wouldn't know about it because there couldn't possibly be a record of it because any human civilization would've been truly reset.
Nuclear armageddon actually never happened.
The collapse of any civilization has never stopped human ambition. That's why when one empire falls another will inevitably rise up.
You could also say software is the technology behind machine learning and machine learning is just a tool created by technology, and then computers are the technology behind software and this process just keeps going back to the most primitive version. So your way of thinking is useless for these conversations. Instead you need to treat every instance of a technology as a technology in itself.
Except we do stop child trafficking and incest to the point where it only affects a minority of people. And that's how it should be. Again, your way of thinking is absurd because it implies we should just let these things run rampant because we can never stop them totally.
The two are not even close. You realize most people in say 1800 were wage slaves, right? It's the natural state of humanity that you have to work to live, and you either do that by being a "wage slave" or working for yourself. Serfs by contrast can't leave their lord's land without permission, can't choose their job and have fewer rights than freemen.
There would be fossil evidence for a start.
But we've been close despite it only being a possibility for 80 years. Natural disasters have been a possibility for far longer and never came close to a human extinction event.
It certainly has stopped a lot of ambitions people had. Then those people died and it was only future generations with different ambitions that were able to make the next great civilization. The same could happen with technological ambition - it could be stopped and then people would pursue different ambitions.
The problem with any "yes/no" chart is the subjectivity of the assessments. That person who had their foolproof chart to PROVE Trump would lose 2024, the chart was actually perfectly fine. If you followed it, it clearly proved Trump would WIN 2024, but the chart's creator said things like "We'll answer 'no' to any political unrest during Biden's reign: scandal-free! And the economy is great, both short-term and long-term! So slot those into the chart..."
Your chart can be TL;DR'd as such:
Possible? Useful? Safe? Affordable? Lacking Alternatives?
What is "possible" is tricky, as we can do things that were written in ancient texts as the realm of gods-only. So a "yes" is often going to be a VERY safe "yes", since we discover new "impossible" things fairly often. In example, Something From Nothing: As a kid, it used to be "matter cannot be created or destroyed, only changed in form", but now it is "energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed in form, one of the forms of energy is matter". Things where the answer is "no" should almost always only be "no... in the short term."
Useful is subjective, but at least less so.
Safe is wildly subjective: We'll use immediately fatally toxic, carcinogenic-to-the-touch spraypaints with only a T-shirt tied over our mouths for protection. Humans are stupid. A "no" on safe is easily overruled by "yes"es on the rest. It only impacts speed of adoption, not the adoption itself.
Affordability is also subjective based upon perceived benefit. A one-time gene therapy against cancer could be ridiculously unaffordable, but still "affordable" (like a million dollars, there's a huge market who'd pay a clean million for that, even if they had to sell their home to do so), or it could actually be so expensive it is only for the richest billionaires, costing a billion dollars a treatment. But knowing the economic reality compared to perceived personal benefit is a subjective judgement.
Lacking Alternatives is also subjective. I got smack-talked in marketing class for saying that BBQ sauce is an alternative to Ketchup. Both are vinegar-and-spices sugared tomato pastes. But others insisted the two are entirely separate markets, that nothing would make them comparable products. Yet I could go even further: Cajun dry-rub is an alternative to Ketchup: It is something put onto food solely to alter its flavor profile. But by that regard, commercial hypnosis is a substitute to Ketchup, since it can also have you perceive the flavor of the food differently. And clearly, hypnosis and ketchup are not comparable products by any reasonable measure. So... What defines an alternative? What "need" is actually being addressed? Missing the core need here will give you an inaccurate result.
I totally agree there's an element of subjectivity involved in these assessments. However one is better able to answer the questions with experience of the world and technology, and especially as we get closer to the technology in question. I included some guides in the questions themselves to make accurate answers more likely.
Perhaps you could even get better at answering these questions if you practice imagining you lived in the past and were using these questions to predict things. Then you can check if your answers were accurate because you would answer the questions the same way in the present.
I don't think this is true if you're talking about something that is seriously and unavoidably unsafe as in question 3 (which I don't think spray paints are), unless it takes a long time for the unsafety to become known or the technology is allegedly to save people from greater danger like the COVID jabs were. I left out such exceptions from the question for simplicity and because it can be hard to predict these exceptions. I also wanted the questions to be conservative on predicting technological adoption rather than too liberal.
And what law of the universe is going to prevent such therapies being done cheaply? Does it require a lot of hours from the gene therapist? But they can be replaced by an AI robot. Does the genetic material cost a lot to make? But why can't a machine be invented that does it cheaply? Very few technologies and their applications are necessarily expensive.
I disagree. If hypnosis were to become 100% effective at changing your tastes and could be done very conveniently and cheaply, say by looking at your phone for 5 seconds, then this would get mass adoption and people using hypnosis to enjoy food would have no need of ketchup, BBQ sauce or Cajun dry-rub. As stated in question 5, an alternative is just something that does the same job with a similar effectiveness, and then really you need to ask the 5 questions about it to see if it's going to be the most popular technology for that job. Another factor with alternatives is how multi-purpose a technology is (which explains why smartphones replaced PDAs) but I wanted to keep the question simple.