Did somebody promise an AI utopia and I missed it?

The expectation that we would get to “general artificial intelligence” soon has hit a rough patch as AI models aren’t progressing as fast as the tech titans wanted. But — I keep seeing articles and comments that the “promised Utopia” hasn’t arrived.

Who promised Utopia?

From what I remember, AI was going to give us …

• Catastrophic job losses, and no economic model by which a culture or a country can survive with so many people out of work.
• An even bigger distinction between haves and have-nots.
• A corresponding mental health crisis, as people lose any sense of meaning in their lives.
• “AI companions,” so we won’t need human friends any more.
• An unpredictable, amoral overlord that’s ten times as smart as a human, and might decide (who knows?) that humans aren’t necessary after all. Or at least most of them.
• The promise of a Borg-like future, where the only way humans can compete is to become part of the machine.

Hardly Utopia. And I haven’t even mentioned that half our economy will be devoted to feeding this beast.

However … I don’t want to sound too glum. There is a bright side.

AI might find cures for diseases, unleash amazing new efficiencies, and invent things we can hardly imagine. It will probably be able to provide safe rides home for all the out-of-work drunks it creates (if they can scrape up some beer money), and a chosen band of humans (100 or so, with their cyber implants) might be living something like a dream existence. (Although it sounds more like a nightmare to me.)

There will be some short-term winners. Sam Altman might have a euphoric feeling as he creates the technology that has more than an even chance of destroying humanity.

But Utopia? Remember that the word literally means “no place.”

AI as it exists right now is an amazing tool, although I’m not sure the gains will offset the losses. Super-intelligent AI will almost certainly be a catastrophe.

I’m glad we’ve dodged this “Utopia” so far, and I pray the promise of general artificial intelligence turns out to be false.