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  New Intelligence Report

This one-minute video has sparked widespread discussion on social media, on the one hand about whether the development of AI will be accelerated so much, and on the other hand about the return on "academic investment".

No one knows what the future will be like. Bostrom's thoughts only represent his personal thoughts, but they reflect the madness and anxiety of people in the AI ​​era.

Everything seems to be accelerating. People are too worried about being devalued due to being left behind, but they also want to seize the opportunity to make money quickly.

"The first superintelligent machine will be humanity's last invention."

This is Bostrom's most famous quote, and this ominous idea comes from his book "Super Intelligence".

This book was named Best Seller by the New York Times and was also recommended by Bill Gates and Musk.

Bostrom was described by The New Yorker as a "doomsday philosopher" and is also known as the "Swedish super brain."

As a professor at Oxford University, he has a multidisciplinary background in theoretical physics, computational neuroscience, logic, artificial intelligence and philosophy. He is one of the most cited philosophers in the world and led the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute from 2005 until its closure in April this year.

In April of this year, Bostrom reiterated this view that superintelligence is the last invention we need to make, but added one more sentence: It may appear in as little as a year.

Why would this thinker promote the seemingly out-of-date theory that "studying is useless"?

Bostrom: This AI revolution may happen in the next 5 to 10 years, but the long-term investment we are making in human capital now is 20 to 30 years. It is very likely that we will not see a return. Because by then, AI may have replaced us in various fields, and human capital will depreciate. This is one aspect that may no longer exist in the future.

If you really enjoy your time at college, then go for it, but if you're pushing yourself just to get a diploma, I'd suggest you seriously consider whether there's a way to save those 3 or 4 years and go straight to doing what you want to do.

Likewise, a PhD program in the US can take 5-6 years, which is a long time, and I think in many cases it's probably too long to be worth it.

Host: Just because the pace of change has accelerated?

Bostrom: Yes, because time may be more critical.

It can be seen that Bostrom is not advising everyone to "drop out of school collectively", but is saying that if you regard studying for a doctorate as an investment, then you may not get the returns you expect, but you can still regard studying as a kind of enjoyment.

The debate among netizens in the comment section is quite exciting.

The blogger who forwarded the video said, "Although I also think it's a bit crazy, it's quite interesting to imagine."

As you can imagine, the forward-thinking idea that “long-term academic investment is not worth it” has aroused public outrage.

"Children, stay in school."

In addition to directly outputting anger points, netizens also raised different reasons for opposition. Some people believe that the AGI envisioned by Bostrom will not come so soon. It is unwise to bet your life on a vague prophecy.

“Dropping out of school is essentially a bet that AGI can be achieved, and history has shown us that progress is not as simple as we think.”

Some people directly refuted the suggestion of "dropping out of school" from a more pragmatic perspective-"taking action may gain something; doing nothing will definitely gain nothing."

“On most paths, having these degrees will lead to better outcomes than not having them. Only a small fraction of those are likely to be reversed as AI improves.”

“Of course, if studying is really painful for you, you should find something else to do, whether there is AI or not.”

If we look at it from the perspective of "education" rather than "diploma", the suggestion of "dropping out of school" becomes even more untenable. After all, the process of learning and creating to satisfy curiosity is itself a manifestation of human dignity.

“What else can you do with all that free time if you’re not in school, considering universal basic income and increased life expectancy?”

Some people have also very calmly put forward a more opposing view - even in the AI ​​era, academic qualifications will not depreciate as quickly as Bostrom said.

“Long-term investments like college degrees and PhD programs are critical to building foundational knowledge so people are prepared to adapt and innovate as AI evolves.”

“Continuous learning ensures lasting impact.”

However, it is also meaningful to think about this issue from the opposite side - at a time when AI is disrupting the job market, what changes should our education system make to keep up with the times? Should the training goals for students evolve?

“It’s time for schools and universities to ask themselves: If the jobs that students are preparing for will be taken over by AI, what is the purpose of these education systems?”

The video of Bostrom that caused heated discussion came from Impact Theory, a program hosted by Tom Bilyeu.

For an hour and a half, Tom Bilyeu and Nick Bostrom delved into the ethical and social impacts of increasingly advanced AI.

These include ethical considerations around artificial intelligence, the potential concentration of power, the automation of key sectors such as the police and military, and “hyper-stimuli” that could have far-reaching effects on society.

There are many scholars like Nick Bostrom who believe that AGI will come soon, and Ethan Mollick of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is one of them.

Earlier this year, Ethan Mollick tweeted, “Many computer scientists thought near-term AGI was impossible, but they’ve changed their minds. Timeline shrunk by 13 years in one year.”

Along with Bostrom’s wild predictions about the accelerating proximity of AGI, the show also mentioned his new book, Deep Utopia, which was released this year.

As the title of the book shows, Bostrom is a technological optimist. He said that the things that happened in the past two centuries have made "dystopia" almost a kind of mental inertia, and people have too much doubt about "utopia".

“People who have these utopian visions of society, if they actually gain the power to realize them, will cause a lot of destruction and suffering.”

But Bostrom seems to have no intention of paying attention. He is more like a thought experiment - when many problems are solved by technology, how will the world change? How will humans view life and meaning at that time?

The central idea of ​​the book is perhaps best summed up in this review by Wired magazine:

Rather than a catastrophic blow, Deep Utopia considers a future in which humans succeed in developing superintelligent machines and avert catastrophe. … The book examines what it means to live in a technological utopia and questions whether such a life might be rather empty.

In this conversation, Nick Bostrom expressed his views powerfully:

“Instead of having some guy driving a garbage truck around the city every morning collecting the trash, you could have a self-driving garbage truck with an Optimus robot on it filling your trash can and picking it up, doing all of that automatically.”

“If you value the preservation of tradition, then there’s probably no other way to preserve tradition than to continue to have humans do all sorts of things themselves.”

“You can imagine that when you have these digital brains, you could accelerate progress in medical research in just a few years, for example, and perhaps unlock treatments that reverse the aging process, and so on, and then avoid a lot of human suffering and death that is currently almost unavoidable.”

“If even a rat can potentially claim sentience and at least some simple form of moral status, then I think that AI systems that are roughly equivalent to rats in terms of behavior will also be prima facie candidates for moral status.”

“Some of the ills of modern society may be due to the absence of certain survival pressures or opportunities that were present in our evolutionary past.”

“If you don’t need to do anything, you need to find something else that can give meaning to your life.”