how to escape the permanent underclass
Let’s look over ‘Fiction I’ carefully and think about which parts work well, which parts work poorly; which parts are realistic, which parts are unrealistic. By the way, I’m listening to this.
The AI busily build reading all the relevant text to each problem they face. Quickly you lose track totally, you desperately try to keep track but each solution they implement is based on more knowledge than you could ingest in years, you don’t have a PhD in the relevant field, you haven’t further specialised on the relevant problem class. So you retreat. You act like a team leader, the AI reports what it has done, since the last report, in abstract terms, nothing any more technical than you need to know. It’s not clear how you can contribute. You can’t contribute. You are fired. Everyone is fired. The company is much more productive now. It’s acquired by Google for the knowledge of the AI systems.
Now all diseases are cured and all the open human math problems are solved and cosmetic surgery can totally change one’s body and video games are so detailed.
In the real world you can teleport and the Sun is fake and you can live in other galaxies if you want because FTL travel is solved.
You decide to be uploaded burning your old body because you don’t want any measure of your conscious experience to be bound by the limitations of the old world. That weird place, the normality of your uploaded life is a welcome return. You are a student in a dark Earth, poor in a world of great wealth and inequality.
You revel in your competence in a way you hadn’t in a long time. You evaluate and you plan and you execute and you do well and you falter and you fail to recover. But you struggle on, slowly climbing back, you are admired and you are admirable and you accomplish what few others could have. And now you are under threat, you lead and you kill and you destroy and you lose much but emerge triumphant and what was before contested is now yours for the taking. So you take it. And you are content. You could go further but you decide you are content. You keep working hard anyway, for now. You secure your position, you invest widely, you give generously, you have a place here forever.
You remember your girlfriend from the old world, from before everything changed. Your heart pangs. The world then had been so small but had seemed so important. The maid brings you tea as you sit still, eyes closed, in meditation. She leaves, some time passes, you take a sip of your tea.
You are young and full of energy always; aging has been solved; you would not choose to spend your time in a world where you had to go through that; the singularity would be for nothing, then.
You decide to walk the streets, you ask a friend to come along, you chat about world affairs while trying the neighborhood delicacies. You are not famous anymore, enough time has passed that you are not at the forefront of any public mind. You take a train carriage to another part of the city, watching the children play in the parks, the offworlder tourists posing for photos, the waterfalls and alien artifacts and the intricate architecture your pleasant backdrop. Later, you study. You’re always studying, every day, to be prepared for whatever might come your way. The world is always evolving, the past is full of knowledge. You duck into a library. A handful of students are studying, adults are reading seriously. You take out your tablet and resume reading a piece on the game theory of trade with a sentient planet in a nearby galaxy. You have some thoughts. You send some messages to the relevant actors, and loop in an analyst from the foundation which manages your estate. You enter an ally on a whim, wander down. An old part of town, mossy brick walls, motifs from a forgotten period. You hear music, you enter a strange bar, you buy a drink, you sip at it and look around at the people, this is a secret place, a social group cut off from the city as you know it. You look around carefully, investigate, you notice somewhere in the building a passageway, you will spend the night in the place it takes you. Open fields of grass with trees in darkness, and water. You run, it’s a game, you must not be found, you are in a team, you find secret passageways, hiding places, places of observation, methods of transportation. Slowly your team is scattered; you have different skills, different motivations. You take a small pod down a long chute and end up in some watery sewers. You wander around, you think you might have gone too far, somehow escaped the playingfield, but you happen upon a teammate hiding beneath some kind of foil blanket, attempting to hide from any scanners the opposing team might get their hands on. Finally day breaks; you made it through. You wander gradually to the exit, exhausted. You get in a cab and tell it to keep driving until you awake, then you sleep. It’s already dark by the time you awaken. You spend months studying and working and striving to understand the world. You meet with others who live rich lives and you learn from them. You make some moves to ensure your security going forward. In a world where the wealthy live forever the dynamics of power punish all but the excruciatingly careful. A few centuries go by. Your maid walks in with some tea, your eyes closed as you sit in meditation. Sunlight pours into the room, warm on your skin. You take a platform to a small library. It contains your estate’s records. You pick a volume at random and read it. Such a different world, but you remember your own life was not too dissimilar to the present. Time, you thought, to start a new world, a totally fresh world, but with the knowledge you have built up in those eons of meditation. The cost was a peaceful period, the result an expanded mind, the result a vastly expanded actionset, the prize a new life of optimal characteristics.
You are losing track. It starts at work. The new AI system is so fast and capable you can’t follow or understand what it’s doing. You retreat along the layers of abstraction, you become something like a leader of an AI team. But another update comes and now you’re not contributing much, another and now you’re not contributing anything. You are fired. Everyone is fired.
Google acquired the company. Now you have lost track almost totally. Some things you notice: all diseases are cured, every open math problem is solved, video games are so detailed now. Teleportation is developed, the Sun is eaten, FTL travel is solved.
You decide to be uploaded. Not wanting any measure of your consciousness to be bound by the limitations of the old world, you will have your body burned. You have been promised that the new world will be one created specifically for you. The new world will have no one else from the old one. This appeals to you.
The old world has gotten weird in these last weeks. You are promised you will be entering a new world whose normality you will welcome. It will be a world designed specifically for you.
You wake up comfy in soft sheets. A voice speaks “Get up, Jim, it’s time to wake up.” You enjoy the comfortable bed for a few seconds more then fall yourself out of it and scramble upright, ready to get an impression of this new world.
You are in a small apartment. “Who are you?” you ask. “I’m an AI called Kai. It’s nice to meet you, Jim. I’ll be your assistant from now on.” Kai replies. “Where am I?” “This is Kotare, Class 1 city with a population of 9.1 million. My records say you moved here to attend Lyttelton West High School, arriving some time yesterday. I was spun up automatically at midnight today.”
You wake up in your apartment. You enjoy your comfortable bed for a few seconds then fall yourself out of it and scramble to the bathroom. The shower attacks you from all sides. You dry yourself with a fluffy towel.
There is AI in this world, although it’s clearly hit a capabilities ceiling much lower than in the old world. You wonder whether it’s due to an intentional slowdown, a different path taken along the tech tree, or maybe something fundamental about this universe.