All of us have been reading about AI could turn into a Frankenstein monster and reduce humans to slaves.Economists have been sceptical about the boost to productivity from AI: the general view is that AI can at best sustain America's productivity growth at 2 per cent, which has been its long-term rate. It can't raise the productivity growth rate.
Along comes an article by computer scientist Ray Kurzweil that suggests that AI is about to open the doors to Paradise on earth in the years to come. He says AI on the threshold of bring about a transformation in three areas: energy, manufacturing and medicine.
The way to solve the world's energy problem is to rely on solar energy which is available in abundance. The challenge is to find photovoltaic materials that are inexpensive and increase the storage capacity of batteries. That is a chemistry problem- finding what combination of chemicals and materials will help address these issues. Kurzweil tells us how AI will crack this problem:
...AI can rapidly sift through billions of chemistries in simulation, and is already driving innovations in both photovoltaics and batteries. This is poised to accelerate dramatically. ... Once vastly smarter AGI finds fully optimal materials, photovoltaic megaproejcts will become viable and solar energy can be so abundant as to be almost free.
Manufacturing will change as energy costs fall and also the costs of labour and raw materials. Robotics will reduce labour costs. It will also reduce raw material extraction costs. As for medicine, AI moleuclar biosimulations will reduce the costs implied in clinical trials and also make possible more effective drugs. We can produce medicines tailored to each individual patient. Away with disease!
Kurzweil says longevity in the US and UK now grows by an extra six to seven weeks ever year. With AI, we may expect life expectancy to increase by 1 year annually. That means, in 30 years,life expectancy in Canada, for instance, will leap from 85 to 115!
Kurzweil's conclusion is breathaking: "This is AI's most transformative promise: longer, healthier lives unbounded by the scarcity and fraitly that have limited humanity since its beginnings.
Makes me wonder: why on earth are economists fretting about long-term economic growth rates falling in the next ten years?
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