Dear Scott,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is you, from 30 years in the future, Christmas Eve 2022. Your Ghost of Christmas Future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To get this out of the way: you eventually become a professor who works on quantum computing. Quantum computing is … OK, you know the stuff in popular physics books that never makes any sense, about how a particle takes all the possible paths at once to get from point A to point B, but you never actually see it do that, because as soon as you look, it only takes one path?\u00a0 Turns out, there’s something huge there, even though the popular books totally botch the explanation of it.\u00a0 It involves complex numbers.\u00a0 A quantum computer is a new kind of computer people are trying to build, based on the true story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, amazing stuff, but you\u2019ll learn about it in a few years anyway.\u00a0 That’s not what I\u2019m writing about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m writing from a future that … where to start?\u00a0 I could describe it in ways that sound depressing and even boring, or I could also say things you won’t believe.\u00a0 Tiny devices in everyone’s pockets with the instant ability to videolink with anyone anywhere, or call up any of the world’s information, have become so familiar as to be taken for granted.\u00a0 This sort of connectivity would come in especially handy if, say, a supervirus from China were to ravage the world, and people had to hide in their houses for a year, wouldn’t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or what if Donald Trump — you know, the guy who puts his name in giant gold letters in Atlantic City? — became the President of the US, then tried to execute a fascist coup and to abolish the Constitution, and came within a hair of succeeding?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alright, I was pulling your leg with that last one … obviously<\/em>! But what about this next one?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s a company building an AI that fills giant rooms, eats a town’s worth of electricity, and has recently gained an astounding ability to converse like people.\u00a0 It can write essays or poetry on any topic.\u00a0 It can ace college-level exams.\u00a0 It’s daily gaining new capabilities that the engineers who tend to the AI can’t even talk about in public yet.\u00a0 Those engineers do, however, sit in the company cafeteria and debate the meaning of what they\u2019re creating.\u00a0 What will it learn to do next week?\u00a0 Which jobs might it render obsolete?\u00a0 Should they slow down or stop, so as not to tickle the tail of the dragon? But wouldn’t that mean someone else, probably someone with less scruples, would wake the dragon first? Is there an ethical obligation to tell the world more about this?\u00a0 Is there an obligation to tell it less<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am—you are—spending a year working at that company.\u00a0 My job—your job—is to develop a mathematical theory of how to prevent the AI and its successors from wreaking havoc. Where “wreaking havoc” could mean anything from turbocharging propaganda and academic cheating, to dispensing bioterrorism advice, to, yes, destroying the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You know how you, 11-year-old Scott, set out to write a QBasic program to converse with the user while following Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics? You know how you quickly got stuck?\u00a0 Thirty years later, imagine everything’s come full circle.\u00a0 You’re back to the same problem. You’re still stuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh all right. Maybe I’m just pulling your leg again … like with the Trump thing. Maybe you can tell because of all the recycled science fiction tropes in this story. Reality would have more imagination than this, wouldn’t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n But supposing not, what would you want me to do in such a situation?\u00a0 Don’t worry, I’m not going to take an 11-year-old’s advice without thinking it over first, without bringing to bear whatever I know that you don’t.\u00a0 But you can look at the situation with fresh eyes, without the 30 intervening years that render it familiar. Help me. Throw me a frickin’ bone here (don’t worry, in five more years you’ll understand the reference).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks!! PS. When something called “bitcoin” comes along, invest your life savings in it, hold for a decade, and then sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n PPS. About the bullies, and girls, and dating … I could tell you things that would help you figure it out a full decade earlier. If I did, though, you’d almost certainly marry someone else and have a different family. And, see, I’m sort of committed to the family that I have now. And yeah, I know, the mere act of my sending this letter will presumably cause a butterfly effect and change everything anyway, yada yada.\u00a0 Even so, I feel like I owe it to my current kids to maximize their probability of being born.\u00a0 Sorry, bud!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Scott, This is you, from 30 years in the future, Christmas Eve 2022. Your Ghost of Christmas Future. To get this out of the way: you eventually become a professor who works on quantum computing. Quantum computing is … OK, you know the stuff in popular physics books that never makes any sense, about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[18,12,42,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embarrassing-myself","category-metaphysical-spouting","category-obviously-im-not-defending-aaronson","category-the-fate-of-humanity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6919"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6929,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6919\/revisions\/6929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u2014Scott<\/p>\n\n\n\n