> I hope so but whenever I do, I feel like I'm coping hard and not dealing with the facts.
Maybe I'm being naive, but as someone who spent 2015-2025 fully bought into the idea AI would replace all human labor within ~20 years, my updated take that it won't has a different flavor than coping.
A bit contributor to my perspective was studying the physics of the brain, and a deeper understanding of the very hard economic constraints in the current LLM supply chain.
Re the brain, we compute information in a fundamental different way that is over 1,000,000 more energy efficient than an LLM. We are also around 1,000,000 times more sample efficient at learning.
There is a lot of details in terms of specifics between complexity in human brain architecture (variety of synapses, diversity of neuron types, etc) that have no material equivalent yet.
And on the other side, understanding how hard it has been to build out euv lithography infra, and to completely retool manufacturing for a new paradigm of computing will require so much coordination, a super AI could have all the answers but we also have to deal with getting a bunch of stubborn people to align.
Some people are just coping yes, but if you really zoom into the details on both sides of the equations the gap between where we are and what it would take to dramatically surpass human intelligence is vast.
At the same time I think people overestimate how hard some kinds of knowledge work is (in absolute terms, since it's new and we haven't evolved into it as much), and how economically impactful human augmentation with weaker narrower AI can still be. (Lots of automation and prosperity but without such extreme disruption)
I think in the very long term all bets are off, but we will have plenty of time to evolve our economic systems before we get there.