The Matrix is getting closer: Will AI replace humans?
AI is still in its infancy, albeit at an extremely fast pace of development. The first effects are already being felt: a massive reduction in the shortage of skilled workers on the IT market. I believe that AI will have a similar impact on world affairs as the Industrial Revolution once did. This led to severe social upheaval over 20-30 years. Today, it is said that it took society 40-50 years to recover.
Before the Industrial Revolution, a farm worker could harvest around 0.1 hectares of grain per day. Today (with combine harvesters) we are talking about an increase in productivity by a factor of 100+. The situation was similar for yarn production, ore mining, etc.
AI is doing the same today. It is causing human productivity to explode and, together with robotics (which will reach productive maturity for real applications in a few years) and biotechnology, will cost millions of jobs. It might be relatively easy to get an IT specialist to train in more complex topics such as AI engineering or development with and for AI. However, a clerk, cook, accountant, cashier, customer advisor, truck driver or warehouse worker will probably not be able to design ML architectures, become a robotics engineer, bio-technician or project manager in their lifetime. These people will inevitably become victims of technological development - not in isolation, but in their millions.
The humans of the new era that is just dawning will be cyborgs with neuralink chips, able to access the world's knowledge with virtually no latency, develop and operate high-tech from today's perspective, and "hop" between continents in self-driving air cabs. Meanwhile, according to Stephen Hawking's prediction, he will have to leave the planet within the next 90 years and research Spaceship X and the conquest of new, extraterrestrial worlds. The next generation will be able to participate through socialization, targeted education and the extreme adaptability of young people. But there will also be a class of people who will be left to live in complete impoverishment and poverty.
I ask myself: Will humans survive as a species at all? Doesn't AI have the power to overtake and replace us in evolutionary terms sooner or later? There are still 1-3% Neanderthals in each of us - a species that was displaced and wiped out by the dominant Homo sapiens (along with thousands of other species, as the attentive Harari reader knows). Why should the most powerful invention of Homo sapiens to date, which has specialized in evolutionary displacement since its existence, act any differently? I don't want to be dystopian, but: Matrix has never been closer.
