alt Hacker News- If AI and robots are as good as Bill suggests , one can infer that AI will signal the end of cities, at least the end of megacities. If the home robot can clean and cook and also do my taxes, hair, and diagnose my health , one is more likely to escape unemployment by moving to a small town where he can find land and resources, and use robots to exploit them, just like humans have always done when economy was based in agriculture. If there is no longer a reason for people to live close together, decentralization is the most likely outcome.
- The biggest geopolitical impact will probably come from AI weapons. Just like previous shifts in weaponry caused the fall of empires , the rise of naval empires and the rise of national modern superpowers, AI may lead to the end of the UN and beginning of something new.
- Societies will change but a plan is not needed and it's most likely useless. Societies adapt , and nobody has ever been able to predict how. Let's not make the same mistake again.
Replies
> If there is no longer a reason for people to live close together, decentralization is the most likely outcome.
Many people like living next to other people purely for social reasons.
You'd better hope Bill Gates stops buying up all the farmland then.
"If there is no longer a reason for people to live close together, decentralization is the most likely outcome."
Umm what? Humans are social animals and many people LIKE living in cities in close proximity to other people and close to amenities. I do not see a future where we decentralize and spread out because of AI.
0% chance you're getting a plot of land and happily ever after in the world as described.
Humans like cities.
It brings people together for mating.
It wasn't only industrialization.
Even today, before AI, once you find a mate, THEN, you move to the suburbs.
I will believe that "AI will do all the work" when private prisons stop contracting inmates to do slave labor and employers stop hiring undocumented migrant workers.