Intro. (Recording date: May 1, 2024)
Russ Roberts: Today is May 1, 2024. My guest is Nicholas Bostrom, a philosopher and writer from the University of Oxford. This is his second time appearing on his EconTalk.The first time he was here was in December of 2014 to talk about his book super intelligenceabout the dangers of artificial intelligence, or AI, and he was worried about that from quite early on.
His new book, and our topic today, is Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World. Nick, welcome to EconTalk.
Nicholas Bostrom: thank you. And so it is. No. 2014. It’s been a while.
Russ Roberts: yes. And I’ve gotten a lot smarter since then. I’m sure you do too. But neither of us are very intelligent. But there are some interesting things there. But that’s not our subject.
Russ Roberts: We’re talking about your new book, but before we start, I want to say, it’s a great book. It is mind-expanding. It’s poetic. It’s moving. box office. The writing is great. Every page is packed with ideas. And it’s about what you call “deep utopia.” The world we seem to be heading towards, a world of unimaginable material abundance, a world where robots and AI can do everything better than we can, almost leading to a world like this. Endless leisure time, if not literally.
And in such a world, you ask, among many things, what will become of us then? In what you call a “settled world,” what gives our lives meaning and purpose? And what do we do all day?
And I think thinking about these issues, as you pointed out, forces us to think about: Non-The question of utopia – the question of how we live now and what is close to utopia for many of us. And for many, it’s not even that close.
But let me start by saying something very encouraging. I think a lot of people are very uneasy about the idea of a settled world, the idea of having all the leisure time that we want all the time. Talk about why people worry about it and why you think it’s not as worrisome as some people think.
Nicholas Bostrom: We have built much of our concept of ourselves and our dignity on the idea that we can make some useful contribution to the world, whether on a large scale or within our families and communities. And insofar as that is the foundation of your self-worth, when that foundation is removed, it creates some kind of vacuum under your feet that can be disconcerting.
Therefore, in a solved world, where all practical problems have already been solved, there are no more problems for us to solve. Or, to the extent that practical problems remain, advanced AI and robots may be better able to address them. So there is nothing practical that requires human work in any case.
It therefore forces a rather fundamental rethinking of what the basis of a good human life is. And no doubt it will require abandoning some valuable assumptions about what life should contain. And I think that’s part of where this feeling of anxiety comes from.
Perhaps people also have more mundane concerns about how they will make a living if they don’t have a job. But the reason I set these things aside in this book is to assume that we have resolved all the practical difficulties that lie between where we are and where we are at stake. So that we can actually get to a point where we can ask questions about fundamental values. The result of this assumption.
Russ Roberts: And it’s somewhat reminiscent of the conversations some people have had around the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI). There, many people suggest that even if, to quote, we can “could afford” financially to take care of people to a fairly high minimum standard. That would be a mistake, because then people would have no reason to work, and then they would work — I don’t know if you quoted that, but I think the idle hands There’s a certain cultural sense of it being the devil’s workshop. . But I think you disagree eloquently.
Nicholas Bostrom: Yeah. Well, more leisure time is a bad thing, and psychologically speaking, that may be true for some people in that some people need a lot of external pressure to maintain an upright posture. I do not think. And I’d probably assume that if this were the only change, that there was a huge economic windfall, where the Gulf states or something could find huge wealth underground and live on rent. I think I’m cautiously looking forward to it. after that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m cautiously hopeful that, at least in theory, there might be a cultural shift in which people are raised not as productive workers but as rich leisure players. I think it’s clear that the current school system, insofar as it aims at specific outcomes, aims to produce disciplined workers. Well, it’s the same as being told (? taught?) to sit at a desk. You will be assigned small tasks to do. why? Because the teacher tells you to do it. It is then scored, graded, and finally stamped with quality control.
And depending on your level, you can continue working in office buildings or factories. This, I hope, is a sad model of what human development can be, in the light of the future. That’s what we need now. teeth All these jobs need to be done, and so we need workers to do them. But imagine the following scenario: It wasn’t like that If we can solve all these tasks, then we can come up with a better way to raise children that fosters appreciation of art and literature, conversation skills, a sense of humor, physical activity, appreciation of nature, etc. I think. All these things that are now relegated to the sidelines.
Russ Roberts: And that’s one of my favorite themes is that culture emerges. It’s not under anyone’s control. It responds to all kinds of forces in the world, such as economic improvement. We will talk about this further, as it is very interesting. You say something very interesting about how things change in another world.
I think there’s always an interesting question about how fast culture changes compared to the speed of technology. If that culture is slow to react, it can cause tremendous suffering and challenges.
The example that comes to mind for me is smartphones. When smartphones came out, I, like others, sometimes said, “Oh, our culture is going to change about what we can do.”and it is have Now I can sit alone and look at my phone and answer calls during a meeting, scroll through my social media feed during dinner, and all sorts of other ways I don’t think I can. That has changed. Very consistent with human flourishing.
And I say that as someone. To do Some of those things sometimes. In other words, the cultural norms that I ultimately think of are: intention It changes, but I think there is a speed issue. But perhaps we have a lot of time.
Nicholas Bostrom: Yeah.So we’re not saying will do I’m saying that it is theoretically possible to use the extra free time to positively affirm your life.
So I think this onion has multiple layers. And what I see as the outermost layer, which is where most of this conversation starts and ends, is we’re looking at scenarios where there’s a moderate increase in automation. Some people will probably lose their jobs, and the answer may be to help them find it through reskilling or a flexible labor market. new work.
There are many jobs today that didn’t exist 100 years ago, when almost everyone was a farmer. And combine that with some sort of cultural adjustment to new technology. Therefore, we would like to encourage more active usage. So I think that would be the right question and the right answer if the technology is basically frozen in its current state, or if it advances a few years further and then it’s just applications. (Continued in the future, 9:51)
