For some reason, my neighbors and friends have been focused on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) phenomenon in recent days, a topic I discussed a while back. Given the recent spate of doom and gloom articles on the topic, virtually all echo my feelings that it is a blessing to be an old fart since we won’t have to confront the unknown world ahead of us. And it’s not just a bunch of retirees who fret about such things. The chief scientist at DeepMind, one of the companies frantically developing the next generation of AI technology, perhaps better labeled AGI or Artificical General Intelligence, offers a horrific possibilitiy. AGI, he recently said, is the greatest existential threat we as a species face, even greater than a global biological pathogen. Yet, the work on this threat continues at an increasingly frantic pace.

I am reminded of Robert Oppenheimer who, upon successfully igniting the first nuclear blast in the New Mexico desert in 1945, likened what he and his fellow scientists had done to the Hindu God of death and destruction. Had they created their own destruction he wondered in that moment. Many of those working on the Manhatten Project later regretted their participation. Besides, I would put anthropogenic climate change at the top of the list of existential threats and I wouldn’t excluse nuclear holocaust just yet. I recall scrambling under my elementary school desk in the 50s when we practiced against the Russkies dropping the Big One. I was sure I would be toast in those days. But it hasn’t happened so far, though there have been at least two very close calls. Iss this a reason for hope?

Technology has its own compelling drive. We are a curious species and want to pursue the unknown. Besides, there are untold riches to be had by those who win command the AGI market. Certain entrepreneurial breakthroughs bring undreamed riches to those who bring a new concept to scale. Think of Jeff Bezos and Amazon, or Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. The returns to those who command future machines that can replace an estimated 300 million jobs globally (one estimate of the labor force impact of AGI) at the start of this next technological innovation cannot even be imagined.

Judy Faulkner, a local Madison entrepreneur, has become a billionaire by taking a small University of Wisconsin Project and turning it into a major company that dominates the medical records industry. She could use this emerging AGI technology to replace the thousands of programmers that toil in the amazing, sprawling campus syill being erected just outside Madison WI (According to my neighbor whose daughter works close to Ms. Faulkner). Think of the returns when you bring to the market a set of machine that can replace the millions of humans hard at work in the medical industry, an empire that represents some 17 or 18 percent of America’s GDP. Croeses would have to step aside for this new wealthy elite which would command unimagined resources and power.

Perhaps, though, all this alarm is overstated. As a good friend has assured me, AI is all around us. It is in our cars, our watches, on our factory floors. It is omnipresent and mostly does good things. And she is right. So far, removing humans (or complementing them) from many functions has improved the world. And yet, I cannot help but think these are tasks being replaced or enhanced at the very beginning of this revolution. It is like the Wright Brothers getting excited when their rickety craft left the ground for some 120 feet on the first try. About a half century later, we were sending our ships into deep space. Don’t be fooled by what you see at the beginning.

Not long ago, we used to talk about the ‘singularity,’ a magical moment when human consiousness could be uploaded onto machines and achieve a kind of immortality. On an episode of the Big Bang Theory, nerdy Sheldon Cooper lamented that he would not live longe enough to be around for this milestone which, when I paid attention to such things, was projected to arrive in the 2040s. Most of those at the forefront of AGI now think any such qualitative breakthrough will happen much sooner than that, though uncertainty remains.

Two facts might be considered. The amount of money being poured into AGI research and development is growing exponentially. In recent years an estimated $21 billion has been invested. In the first 3 months of this year, another $11 billion has been poured in as the race heats up and the functionality of these ‘machines’ leaps forward. Second, the progress in mimicking, replacing, and surpassing human functioning is proceeding at an astounding pace. A decade ago, we were tacken aback that this technology could recognize images at the level of a child and play chess at the level of a Master. By 2022, our friendly devices had mastered virtually all computer games, could pass the Medical Licensing and Bar exams, could write at least 40 percent of the code now done by advanced programmers, could engage in self-reflection and improvement, and could reason at a level way above any and all Republicans.

Some estimate that the sophistication and power of this technology has advanced by a factor of 100 million in that decade. What will this technology look like in another decade, another generation. No one knows. This is why hundreds of top tech people including Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), Elon Musk, and Bill Gates have called for a moratorium on this growing beast to think things through. Would that be enough? Can government take control and regulate this monster when we cannot even agree on our debt ceiling which could plunge the U.S. and world economy into a horrific economic crisis? Look how good we are at dealing with the climate crisis in which warning signals about carbon dioxide emissions were being sounded over a century ago. I am not hopeful.

It is easy to speculate about the millions upon millions of jobs that will be replaced. On a recent trip to the Twin Cities, I passed many over the road trucks, most of which were begging for drivers. Wages and benefits for these positions have gone up in response to the shortages. Some make $100,000 per year now, unheard of in the past. Robotics will replace them in short order, and likely will given the current labor costs. Getting a diagnosis from a doctor? It takes me 6 months to get a freaking appointment now and I live in a city which has a medical facility on every other corner. Even today, AGI can accurately diagnose most conditions faster and as accurately as my smiling internist (who is damn good at what he does.) And professors? Who will need them as teachers? The latest AGI machines can absorb virtually the entire internet. My peers at Wisconsin, as smart as they were, could not keep up with the outpouring of research in their own and increasingly narrow sub-specialities. I could go on but you get the picture.

This leaves us pondering what will happen to people. How will they survive without work? Perhaps more to the point, how will they find purpose in life? I recall a Star Trek episode where the crew of the Enterprize stumbled across a civilization living in a world where machines had taken over all the required tasks. The humans that remained had reverted to a child like level, simply existing without purpose or meaning. Hmm, sounds like my life. In any case, that could well be an idealized scenario.

What I find ironic is that the capacity to replace humans comes at a time when we have so many of them. In the past, children perished in large numbers … half died before puberty across time and over all societies. It was as if it were an iron law. That rate began to fall over the past century plus. It went from 1 in 2 at the onset of the 19th century to 1 in 4 by 1950; then fell to 1 in 5 by 1960; then plunged to less than 1 in 25 by 2017. Sure, we have far fewer pregnancies (and I suppose we could outlaw sex), but the world’s population continues to grow. We have over 8 billion souls seeking to survive today with a growth rate of almost 1 percent annually. That’s a lot of new folks every year given the huge base. What will we do with them all when they become irrelevant?

The pessimists among us (and I sometimes am with them) consider even more horrific outcomes. Machines that smart, and having access to all of human history and our record of unimaginable stupidity and barbarism, cannot help but conclude that the hom-sapien species was wildly misnamed. There is nothing wise about us. What would they need with us, or most of us at least? In the aggregate our resume is not impressive. One wag speculated that our demise from any rising up of AGI would at least be more efficient and painless than alternative armageddons like climate disaster or nuclear war. That’s a consolationI suppose.

In Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece (2001: A Space Oddyssey), one of the space ship’s crew members eventually shut down HAL, the onboard computer when it decided the human crew was not worth the effort, though it was a close run thing. I wonder if we will have a Dave when our time comes, and what the outcome will be?