11: If we get things right, AI could have huge benefits

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There is no contradiction between AI carrying huge potential risks, and it carrying huge potential upsides if we navigate the risks. Both are a consequence of the prospect of AI becoming extremely powerful.

The benefits that human-aligned AGI could bring are a major part of what motivates researchers to build such systems. Things we can confidently expect based on extrapolating from current technology include:

The development of more advanced technology in fields like agriculture, medicine, energy, computing, and transportation.
Economic growth in the form of widespread access to services that are currently provided by remote workers.
Robots doing much of our manual labor.

Examples that are more speculative, but seem physically feasible, include:

Ending diseases.
Curing aging and involuntary death.
Exploring and colonizing the galaxy.
Growing the economy by many orders of magnitude and ending poverty as we know it.

But to get these benefits, we’d have to ensure not only that we use these systems for good instead of for ill, but that they can be human-aligned at all. We’d have to get our act together, but many experts worry that we’re on a path to failure.