Bam, that's the kind of thing I want to read, because that's a direct reference to singularity :)

We learned that you can get the same result from less parameters and more training. It's a tradeoff thing, so I'm not entirely surprised. We cannot assume that GPT's approach is the most efficient one out there, if anything it's just brute force effectiveness and we should desperately hope that the same or better results can be achieved with much less hardware ultimately. And so far it appears that this is true and is the case.

People have always worked, that's not the problem.

Moneyless economy is a non-starter.

Gradual replacement seems viable, the new neurons need to be able to fully replicate the functions of the biological ones.

Consciousness is orthogonal to life and death however, so it's not a very good question. One can be alive and unconscious, so what's to say one cannot be dead and conscious, via artificial neurons or the like.

You could also grow a mind in an organic simulation, from scratch.

Well it was, but in service to my point that rock was pretty broad at one point, with the Beatles ungodly popular. But with the spread of genre no one can ever be that popular again.

What's important isn't the bastardized analogy but the point, that humanity will not follow just one or the other course, but dozens of them across many niches, and it's wrong to claim it will be one or the other, it will be both plus a couple dozen others.

Zero chance of a binary choice.

Think of genres of music. There used to be like one genre of music, classical / church music, then everyone loved the Beatles, then genre flowered into dozens of genres and no band could ever be as big and popular as the Beatles ever again due to tastes becoming highly varied and niche.

The future will be highly varied and niche. Maybe some will delve deeply into digital worlds, but it's not likely to be the masses, because the real world is too compelling. We may see more augmented reality than people trying to live entirely in a digital world. While others will begin exploring space, or this or that.

> I believe we will either revert to a neo-neolithic society and start all over from scratch

That's a silly idea.

Of course.

> But as long as we're in sci-fi territory

That's just the thing though, there's nothing "scifi" about the idea of starlifting and extending the life of a star or storing hydrogen fuel for burning later. It's a mundane concept that could definitely be done, not a scifi idea that could not be done.

> When we're young time seems to move at a glacial pace, but the older we grow, the faster time seems to move and the more we panic about our mortality. I think a similar psychology would still play out, only over astronomical timescales.

I don't see why. A being with no mortality would also have no fear of mortality. In the future, and this part is more on the scifi scale, it is likely humanity will merge with machines and obtain essentially eternal "life" thereby, if a mechanical body could be called a form of life.

Such a being might be destroyed, but could be backed up in a thousand different places and thus able to resurrect over and over again. What would such a being have to fear?

> But at the end of the universe we'll just be staring into the dark, meaningless void. I think the second-half of the universe's lifespan could be pretty psychologically rough if a solution isn't found.

Turn inwards and build VR worlds, is the obvious answer, because such a place can be far better than the real world we live in now while feeling and looking just as real. This is considered one of the solutions to Fermi's paradox as well, in a universe where FTL is not possible, turn inwards, go virtual.

I've long been waiting for something like this. I want to watch movies where you can replace actors, re-spin endings in 'what if' scenarios, etc., etc. It will be a great time to be alive.

An earlier version would be to do things like ask an AI to remix music for you, what if Green Day played polka, stuff like that.

FTL will never exist, that's both freeing and liberating. It means we own the galaxy without much risk of another species coming to dominate the universe, as would surely have already happened if FTL were possible.

Eh not really. Why bother trying to reverse it when it can be near indefinitely forestalled.

Isaac Arthur has done the math, and we know of ways to, for instance, vastly extend the life of stars by removing their iron, for instance, and adding new hydrogen. And we can store massive quantities of fuel for them. Turn billions of years into quintillions of years.

Ways to run virtual civilizations on the energy output of black holes, long after the entire universe has gone dark.

Industrial robots are special purpose, they aren't total replacements for what humans are good at. And they're significantly expensive and a general human-replacement robot would be an order of magnitude or two more expensive.

Yes, exactly, but most people don't have the economic training to reach that conclusion, much less understand the mechanics of it.

>AGI can be operated for less than hiring and supporting a human.

Yeah it's not nearly close to that currently. A human can be hired immediately for a monthly wage cost, a few thousand dollars.

A machine that can do what a human can could cost hundreds of dollars right now, with an AI that's far more advanced that even GPT3 and takes up entire datacenters, etc., etc. The human never breaks down or requires calling a maintenance crew either, etc.

Jobs will be here for a long time yet.

IMO, people will purchase robots long before 'all jobs are gone' and use them to make stuff and do work. In the future, the rich will own many robots and the poor fewer, but all will own robots. And the economy will still function because, though robots are doing the work, scarcity is still a factor, prices will not be zero, but your robots may be the ones earning income for you.

People of that era will live far better than we do, with massive price deflation and far better access to goods.