In the coming years, one thing will become very important: that people consciously decide, whether they simply want to achieve a result, or whether they want to build skills in a specific consciously selected field.
Some examples: If you want to become a weightlifter, it is a bad idea to use a robot or some other machine as the weightlifter. Then it is an engineering achievement, not the muscle performance of a human. So it makes little sense to train as a weightlifter by using a lifting machine to lift the weights. You have to do the training yourself, and consciously decide not to use machines for that. But if you simply want to store and organize objects in a warehouse, then the focus is on the result, and you use lifting machines so that you can move weights that a human could never lift.
The same applies to mathematics, or any other field. If you want to become a mathematician, you have to train your logical and mathematical intelligence. Computers are a powerful tool, but the work of training yourself to understand the problems in the first place still has to be done by a human. No human is going to calculate a fractal with 1024×1024 points at an e+100 deep zoom 100000 iterations in their head or with a pocket calculator. For that they use the lifting machines of a fast computer. But they recherche the principles and qualities on fractals, and the computer as the weight lifter.
The invention of the calculator did not lead to the complete mathematical degeneration of society. Why? (The roman number system did. Why?) Because simple mental arithmetic is the most primitive form of mathematical knowledge. The interesting part of mathematics does not lie in calculating quickly, but in understanding complex relationships, and in building the reasoning and intuition needed to solve mathematical problems that are still unsolved. Even number theorists may instinctively stay away from calculators at first, precisely to learn the methods of calculating mentally as efficiently as possible, and to build their own abilities in that area. And then use the Computers later for more deeper understandings. (To get real skills, order matters!)
For someone who wants to tell stories, it is a bad idea to try to get an LLM to create good stories for them full automatically. They will lose in many ways. Not only will they make themselves unnecessary, but they will also fail to build any skills of their own. And the mass of stories, no matter how good they are, will create (use some of this, or all: arbitrariness, weariness, jadedness, ennui, boredom, oversatiation, complacency, meaninglessness, indifference, aimlessness, interchangeability, loss of real individuality), For lazy people, this will have consequences, because they will try to do everything only with a prosthesis, until they themselves have no mental muscles left at all.
A musician should simply be able to enjoy the music he can create by him self, completely independent of what already exists or what can be effortlessly generated automatically. Simply because the activity itself is inspiring, and because using and developing one’s own abilities is the actual goal.
These decisions will become even more important with AI in the coming years. People will have to decide whether they want to deliberately build skills in a certain field, or whether they only need a result, or whether they simply want a machine to carry out an already existing plan because it is faster or stronger in the execution.
There is a danger of creating a society without skills, which in the end can collapse because of its own degeneration through “prosperity”. This has already happened in every empire that has ever existed, as far as humanity can remember. Society faces the danger of degeneration through fake “prosperity” (Much mostly useless low quality things for many, profit for few, no real quality or meaneing for any, some form of parasitical ideology as system driver), or a paradise effect in hyperdrive.
This will also become important for educational systems. While it can certainly make sense to avoid the deliberately created and often pointless pressure to mostly learn endless things in todays schools. usually just memorizing them to pass an exam and then never using them again in life. (I think everyone can remember how much useless stuff they had to learn just to pass an exam, only to forget it forever afterward, without ever developing a real understanding or any genuine skills or benefit in the subject.) there is also the danger that people will increasingly believe they can get through life with total laziness, and no longer have to build any real skills at all.
In a positive sense, this could finally lead to improving our rather primitive educational systems, with a clear focus on consciously making independent decisions about which areas people want to build skills in, and in which areas they only need to know how something works in order to obtain a result. The more people think about this, the less degeneration through “prosperity” will become a problem. There will always be such people. The only question is whether they can push an entire society into the red zone, or whether they remain some individuals who simply cannot deal with their own laziness.
There also needs to be a discussion about what the fundamental motivators of a society should be if it is to continue developing. If a society is at its core motivated by egoism, competition, and parasitism, then it is in great danger of driving itself into collapse. If it is oriented toward symbiosis and toward maximizing the ability to develop as a whole, and if it tries to find a meaningful role and sense in life for every individual., then it will not only avoid collapse, but also develop the abilities to reach evolutionary stages that today we cannot even imagine. The discussion will be about moving away from always having more and more things, and instead focusing on having skills and meaning, and to live and by one of hopefully interesting stories in the universe. (What ist the universe else then a extremely big sorry platform, where all parts can find there own way of living one, from the smallest to the biggest, with the chance to fail included.) Every new technology has gradually put more and more pressure on these decisions. If humanity chooses the wrong path. that means choosing ever more efficient egoism, mostly focused on very few, it is in ever greater danger. And every tech unexceptionally so becomes a weapon with with increasing potential for self-destruction. If humanity chooses symbiosis, then the future becomes extraordinarily interesting.
But the pressure for conscious, intelligent analysis and deliberate decisions in this direction will continue to grow larger and larger, and time to get it done become less…
(The Carousel it spinning faster and faster. The question is whether it will simply filter out a few “heavy, sluggish” parts, or tear the entire system apart. (and, cui bono, omnibusne an paucis potentibus.))
(Written from a human, translated from a machine. Because language is not my skill decision.)