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Raising Children on the Eve of AI

juliawise.net

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Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#2
> Is it even ok to have kids?

According to me (utility function, etc) it's required you have kids. Only in the 2.X statistical sense though, but if not what's the point? You can't condition all your problems out, but you at least have to play to not lose.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#3
One bit of warning: we tend to overestimate the short term impact of new tools while underestimating their long term ones.

It’s likely our kids will have recognisable professions with better phones than not. AI will be there assisting us in increasingly sophisticated ways, acting as intelligent agents and maybe even impersonating us at simple interactions.

Value and supply chains change slowly and those are the things that can really make the biggest changes.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#5

> Partly because even in a world where it became clear that school isn’t useful I don’t follow… In what world is school not useful? I suspect the social value of school will become much more apparent soon.

Lots of them, depending on what you mean by "school" and "useful". I think it's doubtful we're in one though.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#6
post #2

> Is it even ok to have kids? According to me (utility function, etc) it's required you have kids. Only in the 2.X statistical sense though, but if not what's the point? You can't condition all your problems out, but you at least have to play to not lose.

I’m not a huge fan of CS Lewis but the quote at the end is very on point. Let’s continue to be human and do human things. Change will come as it always does.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#7

> Partly because even in a world where it became clear that school isn’t useful I don’t follow… In what world is school not useful? I suspect the social value of school will become much more apparent soon.

It's not that it's actually not useful, but given everything going on it certainly feels not useful to a lot of kids.

In a lot of ways, school is the part of our society that changes the slowest.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#8
post #6
post #2

> Is it even ok to have kids? According to me (utility function, etc) it's required you have kids. Only in the 2.X statistical sense though, but if not what's the point? You can't condition all your problems out, but you at least have to play to not lose.

I’m not a huge fan of CS Lewis but the quote at the end is very on point. Let’s continue to be human and do human things. Change will come as it always does.

It's okay I guess if you think you have no causal impact on if any of that happens, but otherwise you better be doing something to help, even if it would only work in a tiny part of probability space, instead of waiting to die.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#9

> Partly because even in a world where it became clear that school isn’t useful I don’t follow… In what world is school not useful? I suspect the social value of school will become much more apparent soon.

In a world where we have personalized tutors and assistants that can pass on knowledge much more efficiently and effectively than human teachers can.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#10
post #2

> Is it even ok to have kids? According to me (utility function, etc) it's required you have kids. Only in the 2.X statistical sense though, but if not what's the point? You can't condition all your problems out, but you at least have to play to not lose.

I don't mean to show a lack of respect for parents and their good will.

However, could we say that "you at least have to play to not lose" is a particularly selfish reason for having children?

Here, "Playing" is making sure the parents will have caregivers, not that the children will live happy.

If the current situation is not worrying enough to rule out having happy kids, what would be the threshold? (Not a rhetorical question)

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