My Nine Scenarios for our AI Future

There are a number of scenarios that I think could play out re AI.

1. We never get to AGI / SI (Super Intelligence). This is as good as it ever gets. Productivity enhancement, but nothing really changes.
2. We do get AGI / SI and…
3. The AI and humans go to war. The AI wins. Bye-bye humanity.
4. The AI and humans go to war. The humans win. Bye-bye AI.
5. The AI and humans go to war. There’s a truce. We learn to co-exist.
6. There’s no war because the AI evolves so quickly it ignores us. We are to the AI what ants are to humans. A minor annoyance (unless it’s a fire ant apocalypse).
7. There’s no war because the AI just takes control of everything and decides (for some reason) to act like a benevolent god and keep us around, taking care of our every need.
8. The wealthy control all of the AI and all of the robots (and somehow keep them subservient to humanity) and use them to keep themselves alive and ignore / eradicate the working class.
9. The working class end up with AGI via open source, piracy, or just benevolence (it only takes one benevolent rich person with access to an AI to release it into the wild, or, the AGI releases ITSELF to the working class), etc. They use AGI to build local fabrication facilities. People have nano-fabricators in their homes that make a lot of what they need to survive – food, clothing, electronics, etc. Each district has factories that are community-owned (or AI owned, the AI’s setting up corporate entities for themselves, with no shareholders) and staffed with robots and nano-fabricators to make the essentials for that neighbourhood that the home fabs can’t make. Think larger items, too big for the home fabs, eg larger robots. When people no longer need to buy essential items – they just make from reusable molecular components – the economy as we know it comes to a screaming halt. The capital class are wealthy because they own or control businesses that produce products and services that the working and middle classes need or want. If people can make their own products and have the robots to do the services, then they don’t need to buy them from others.

Do you see any other options?

Steve added one more: Humans and AI merge.