"We are witnessing a general threat to intellectual work, with misalignment between the outcome of the use of AI and its initial purpose"
Suppose we eventually have GPT-7-class models running practically on $100 devices, with their activity transparent, inspectable, and reproducible. At that point, what exactly is left for us to fear from this threat?
What's the threat? I would use it to write a dependent type theory that is JIT compiled and use it to rewrite emacs.
The fact that those models are encroaching on things only human minds could do. Personally, as a human, I want there to be things humans are the best at, and intellectual things were the final thing that machines hadn't beaten us at.
I've got to ask, let's say we get a small modular nuclear reactor running practically on a 1 acre lot, its design meltdown proof and waste-free, what then should we fear from this threat ? This is just a thought experiment.
Jokes aside, any productivity-improving technology, even one with no negative externalities, has the potential to cause economic displacement and wealth concentration in proportion to the productivity gains catalyzed. Anthropic did a cool analysis of this for AI here: https://www.anthropic.com/institute/econ-scenarios