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.
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.
That's quite wrong. Human trafficking is a huge problem globally. Incest is extremely widespread in the third world.
There is a difference between working your own land to survive and slaving away for a meager wage for your entire live and never owning anything or really being able to truly live a good life. That is the reality for much of humanity. Even in the European world.
In most countries of the European world you don't have the option of removing yourself from this system. You either participate in it or you die. Going your own way, living off of your own land is not an option for a large majority of people. Also even if you have your own land and live off of it you still have to pay property taxes or you'll get evicted.
You also can't simply leave your country. You need a passport and if you want to permanently leave that country you'll have to pay taxes to do so. I'm not sure if I would call that freedom.
There is plenty of evidence for a lot of extinction level events and even just catastrophic natural disasters.
For example we know that large parts of the north-sea weren't always underwater. We don't know what civilization was wiped out by whatever caused that.
Sure. Like Covid was close to wiping out humanity. If you want to believe those stories, believe them. I can't stop you.
It never stopped human ambition. It only reset progress. The Christian destruction of the classical world destroyed an incredible treasure trove of knowledge and cultural achievements but Europe bounced back from that. You can't halt progress. You can only guide progress.
But we're getting off the track. I'll stand by my statement that is impossible to stop progress. New technologies will always be developed. So you either embrace human nature and adapt or you'll kneecap your own people and inevitably get swallowed up by those who didn't do that.