Do you like to read an essay written by AI then you are at right place. An article in Substack discusses the possible social and psychological consequences of immortality; the surprise is that the text has been written by an artificial intelligence without help or corrections.
OpenAI is a private research center in San Francisco, California whose stated mission is to ensure that “artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. Aware of the risks that the use of highly advanced artificial intelligence systems could have if monopolized by companies or governments, OpenAI makes these systems available to everyone.
One of the OpenAI projects is called GPT-3 — OpenAI, and it is a natural language engine in English. You can ask questions and respond appropriately, looking for the information you need on the Internet.
The author of the Perceptions newsletter provided a simple introduction to the system so that from there he began to compose the text:
“What follows is an essay on immortality and its consequences on human society. Much of our world is based on the fact that one day we are going to die. What if one day, suddenly, we couldn’t die? What would change? These are the questions that Balaji Srinivasan tries to answer in this essay. Here is the essay written by AI.
Immortality and Its Consequences
Biotechnology and nanotechnology have great potential to disrupt all man-made systems we have today, including death. Below is a game-like example of how immortality would completely change the structure of society, an example so simple it may sound silly, but it clearly illuminates the principles.
Imagine that a pill has been discovered that can make you live forever, in perfect health, without aging. How would that pill change society?
Consider the different types of postures available to humans in our society.
Some are valued for the intrinsic reward. If the pill works, you could spend a lifetime collecting pictures, for example, and you’ll have all the time in the world to do it. That is the way to “enjoy your passions,” and there is no point in using money as a measure here. As time becomes effectively infinite, all previous time-based calculations, such as interest and wages, lose their meaning. And you don’t have to worry about running out of resources: if people care about paintings, you can clone yourself a few million times, paint a bunch of paintings, and then rent your clones as painters.
There is also a path to “work hard and climb the corporate ladder” where people compete to rise to the top of hierarchical organizations. What kind of corporate hierarchy would make sense in the world of immortality? One that is much more merit-based and more egalitarian than any we’ve seen so far. The fact that you live forever can make social status much less important. In this type of world, education would be open and free. A child born with an incredible natural talent could outperform any adult, just as a child born with a disability might need extra help. Hierarchies that are based more on merit could offer more autonomy to those at the top. They would have a higher rate of professional satisfaction compared to professional boredom. They could be in charge of their own wages.
Those who choose this path would have tremendous motivation to work hard and learn new skills, just to keep up with changing times.
There is also a third type of path: a path that leads to assuming power and controlling others. Again, this path would probably be less attractive in a society with immortality. You would still have resources, but there would be no point in following this path in the same way.
In a world without death, competition would be based on speed of execution. For example, if someone invents a cure for cancer, we could run to raise the money to mass-produce it. This would likely create a new type of “go go go” society, with no time for politics or outdated methods of persuasion, and more hierarchies based on merit.
An immortality pill would render most “job” jobs obsolete. The remaining “job” jobs will be less merit-based and will be things like the government jobs that exist today, a few types of hard-to-automate professions (like surgeons), and rare jobs like the pest exterminator job. . In a society where work could be effectively taken over by AIs, the government would probably have less power, but there would still need to be government institutions to prevent abuse, or else what incentive would someone have to take the pill? ?
How could markets change in a society with immortality? If markets are to continue to exist, in an eternity in which money has lost all meaning, they will likely have to change their approach to maintain any utility. One could imagine a scenario where there is a limit to the amount of wealth one can have in this society. There is also likely to be a zero interest rate, because time becomes effectively infinite. In this scenario, one could imagine a model where if you invent a new technology that is considered an existential risk (for example, AI), it might be necessary to pay some kind of fee to protect yourself from that risk.
Let’s consider an existing form of market that could become extremely relevant in a society with immortality: the marriage market. It is likely to become much more important since status is no longer something that can be achieved by earning a lot of money. In fact, a successful husband would be someone who can support the woman of her dreams in a world where there are effectively no resource constraints.
There are also a number of political implications. In particular, a society with a large fraction of people taking the pill would create a large constituency for pro-rejuvenation policies, including anti-aging research, health care, and even extra spending on curing congenital disabilities.
What about the problem of free will? Isn’t this drug effectively slavery? If people cannot die, they cannot withdraw from a life they no longer want to lead. In fact, some people who take the pill may continue to do so out of pure sense of duty or inertia. Without death, they will no longer have the escape offered by dying. In this sense, immortality is much more insidious than slavery, which at least allows the slave to escape. If there is no way for someone to escape from a situation that they no longer consider desirable, the power dynamic between them and the world around them can become very unbalanced.
Imagine the position of someone who is dissatisfied with their life in a world where they cannot die. If you cannot die, there is no escape. In a way, the only option is to remove your thoughts from your current world. And the only way to do it is through mental states like meditation or psychedelics. If you want to get out of the world of work, instead of burning yourself, maybe you could turn to recreational drugs. But that could carry its own problems, because some of these drugs have side effects, and even cause death. The arrival of an immortality pill would also have far-reaching implications for human society. How might our current definition of “human” change? Our concept of human is that of a fragile bag of water, a machine that takes food and turns it into fuel. How many people want to stay in that fragile machine state indefinitely?
Wouldn’t they rather become cyborgs, or AI? In an immortality society, there is no need for those types of machines, and everyone will choose to become a different type of machine, a stronger type. People could choose to merge with their computers and remove their biological brains, because biological brains will be meaningless. This would change the meaning of life, and change humanity in ways that we cannot predict. Even now, some people are in a hurry to “become trans human” through technologies such as consciousness unloading and nootropics. An immortality pill would make that choice much easier. If we had an immortality pill, a true cyborgs immortal world would be just a matter of time. In short, if there is an immortality pill, there are likely to be fewer jobs, more competition on the market, faster change in corporate hierarchy, a new type of merit-based society, the advent of a new type of go-go-go society, a new type of marriage market, and a much larger electorate pushing for a rejuvenation pill. All of these changes would likely be accompanied by a sense of wonder and admiration as the world continues to change.
If you are young, it is important to understand these changes to prepare yourself. As things stand, we are not prepared for the world we live in, and you may find yourself trapped in a suboptimal position. However, if you have a good plan of where the world is headed, you can plan ahead for that future. For example, a high IQ would be very valuable in a society of immortality.
