A Totally Non-Scary AI Future 

Public conversation about AI advances has been dominated by talk of potential risks and downsides. The recent OpenAI–Hugging Face hack , for example, has raised new alarms about the cyber capabilities of advanced models and our ability to fully control autonomous agents. And even though the weight of the data so far suggest little to no AI impact on jobs , concerns about severe labor market disruption coming soon persist. Some balance in the discussion would be helpful. What we believe about the future matters. As Dutch futurist Frederick Polak famously put it, any culture “turning aside from its own heritage of positive visions of the future, or actively at work in changing these positive visions into negative ones, has no future.” People who think AI could be a powerful general-purpose technology, or perhaps even something more, need to present plausible and positive visions beyond vague talk of cancer cures.  One such outlook comes from  Forecasting Research Institute , which is conducting a running survey of expert beliefs about AI. In the most recent  update , respondents—180 experts, 53 superforecasters, and 595 members of the public—gave their forecasts about the benefits of continued AI progress concerning chronic disease, life expectancy, economic growth, the personal value of AI, and happiness. When making their forecasts, the respondents were asked to consider “slow, “moderate, and “rapid” scenarios for AI progress by 2030.  First, the main results, which should perhaps make folks who wants to pause or stop AI progress update their views:  “If AI progress is rapid, experts forecast 500,000 annual deaths from tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and malaria in 2050, compared with 1.65 million deaths if AI progress is slow.” “Experts forecast that rapid AI progress would increase U.S. life expectancy by almost 16 years in 2100, compared with just six years if AI progress is slow.” “Under rapid AI progress, experts forecast that annualized GDP growth between 2045 and 2050 will be 3 percentage points higher in advanced economies and 2 percentage points higher in emerging and developing economies than under slow AI progress.” “Experts and superforecasters expect US users to value a month of generative AI access at about $450 in 2026, rising to $1,500 by 2030 if AI progresses rapidly.” “Even if AI capabilities progress rapidly, forecasters expect global happiness to stay nearly flat.” But also super interesting are the scenarios created by FRI to illustrate those various levels of AI progress. Slow progress from now to 2030 is basically more of the same with some modest improvement: “[AI] can automate basic research tasks, generate mediocre creative content, assist in vacation planning, and conduct relatively standard tasks that are currently performed by humans in homes and factories.” No white-collar bloodbath, no AI superweapons, no bots running amok.  “Moderate progress” would be acceptable most Americans, I think, and certainly most economists who are still looking for business impacts and tend to eschew more outlier scenarios: “By the end of 2030, in this middle-of-the-road future, AI is capable of being an effective collaborator across creative, corporate, and technical arenas.” Helpful AI agents everywhere. So, too, robotaxies.  Then there’s the “rapid progress” scenario:  By the end of 2030, in the rapid-progress world, AI systems are capable of competing with the best human minds and workers, and can surpass them. Human creativity and leadership remain valued, but mostly for setting high-level vision—day-to-day execution can be left to silicon-based systems. Autonomous researchers can collapse years-long research timelines into days, weeks, or months, creating game-changing technologies, such as materials that revolutionize energy storage, or bespoke cancer cures. No human freelance software engineer can outperform AI.… Not only do Level-5 robo-taxis exist, but they are, on average, 99.9% safer than human-piloted cars and can venture anywhere off-road that a competent human driver can. Robots in advanced factories can autonomously perform the full range of tasks requiring the highest levels of dexterity, coordination, and adaptive decision-making.  This isn’t utopia, and it’s a world with plenty of job market apprehension and disruption as one would expect given a highly productive new tech tool. But it’s certainly a recognizable world, one where public policy can be useful in mitigating unacceptable downsides. It’s a world worth pursuing. (Those bespoke cancer cures would be pretty awesome, too.) Frankly, both the moderate and rapid scenarios are underweighted in much of the public discussion in favor of extreme scenarios. Like I said, some balance would be helpful.  The post A Totally Non-Scary AI Future appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI .