Machines of Loving Grace

Machines of Loving Grace, How AI Could Transform the World for the Better, an essay by Dario Amadei, October 2024. I

think and talk a lot about the risks of powerful AI. The company I'm the CEO of,

powerful AI. The company I'm the CEO of, Anthropic, does a lot of research on how to reduce these risks. Because of this, people sometimes draw the conclusion that I'm a pessimist or doomer who

thinks AI will be mostly bad or dangerous. I don't think that at all. In

dangerous. I don't think that at all. In

fact, one of my main reasons for focusing on risks is that they're the only thing standing between us and what I see as a fundamentally positive future. I think that most people are

future. I think that most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be, just as I think most people are underestimating how bad the risks could be. In this essay, I try

to sketch out what that upside might look like, what a world with powerful AI might look like if everything goes right. Of course, no one can know the

right. Of course, no one can know the future with any certainty or precision, and the effects of powerful AI are likely to be even more unpredictable

than past technological changes. So, all

of this is unavoidably going to consist of guesses. But, I am aiming for at

of guesses. But, I am aiming for at least educated and useful guesses, which capture the flavor of what will happen even if most details end up being wrong.

I'm including lots of details mainly because I think a concrete vision does more to advance discussion than a highly hedged and abstract one. First, however,

I wanted to briefly explain why I and Anthropic haven't talked that much about powerful AI's upsides, and why we'll probably continue, overall, to talk a

lot about risks. In particular, I've made this choice out of a desire to maximize leverage. The basic development

maximize leverage. The basic development of AI technology and many, not all, of its benefits seems inevitable unless the risks derail everything, and is

fundamentally driven by powerful market forces. On the other hand, the risks are

forces. On the other hand, the risks are not predetermined, and our actions can greatly change their likelihood. Avoid

perception of propaganda. AI companies

talking about all the amazing benefits of AI can come off like propagandists, or as if they're attempting to distract from downsides. I also think that as a

from downsides. I also think that as a matter of principle, it's bad for your soul to spend too much of your time talking your book. Avoid grandiosity. I

am often turned off by the way many AI risk public figures, not to mention AI company leaders, talk about the post-AGI world as if it's their mission to single-handedly bring it about like a

prophet leading their people to salvation. I think it's dangerous to

salvation. I think it's dangerous to view companies as unilaterally shaping the world, and dangerous to view practical technological goals in essentially religious terms. Avoid

sci-fi baggage. Although I think most

sci-fi baggage. Although I think most people underestimate the upside of powerful AI, the small community of people who do discuss radical AI futures

often does so in an excessively sci-fi tone, featuring, for example, uploaded minds, space exploration, or general cyberpunk vibes.

I think this causes people to take the claims less seriously, and to imbue them with a sort of unreality. To be clear, the issue isn't whether the technologies described are possible or likely. The

main essay discusses this in granular detail. It's more that the vibe

detail. It's more that the vibe connotatively smuggles in a bunch of cultural baggage and unstated assumptions about what kind of future is

desirable, how various societal issues will play out, etc. The result often ends up reading like a fantasy for a narrow subculture, while being off-putting to most people. Yet, despite

all of the concerns above, I really do think it's important to discuss what a good world with powerful AI could look like, while doing our best to avoid the above pitfalls. In fact, I think it is

above pitfalls. In fact, I think it is critical to have a genuinely inspiring vision of the future and not just a plan to fight fires. Many of the implications

of powerful AI are adversarial or dangerous, but at the end of it all, there has to be something we're fighting for, some positive sum outcome where everyone is better off, something to

rally people to rise above their squabbles and confront the challenges ahead. Fear is one kind of motivator,

ahead. Fear is one kind of motivator, but it's not enough. We need hope as well. The list of positive applications

well. The list of positive applications of powerful AI is extremely long and includes robotics, manufacturing, energy, and much more. But, I'm going to

focus on a small number of areas that seem to me to have the greatest potential to directly improve the quality of human life.

The five categories I am most excited about are: one, biology and physical health, two, neuroscience and mental health, three,

economic development and poverty, four, peace and governance, and five, work and meaning. My predictions are going to be radical as judged by most

standards other than sci-fi singularity visions, but I mean them earnestly and sincerely. Everything I'm saying could

sincerely. Everything I'm saying could very easily be wrong, to repeat my point from above, but I've at least attempted to ground my views in a semi-analytical

assessment of how much progress in various fields might speed up and what that might mean in practice. I am

fortunate to have professional experience in both biology and neuroscience, and I am an informed amateur in the field of economic development, but I am sure I will get

plenty of things wrong. One thing

writing this essay has made me realize is that it would be valuable to bring together a group of domain experts in biology economics international

relations, and other areas to write a much better and more informed version of what I've produced here. It's probably

best to view my efforts here as a starting prompt for that group. Basic

assumptions and framework.

To make this whole essay more precise and grounded, it's helpful to specify clearly what we mean by powerful AI, i.e. the threshold at which the 5-10

i.e. the threshold at which the 5-10 year clock starts counting. As well as laying out a framework for thinking about the effects of such AI once it's

present. What powerful AI, I dislike the

present. What powerful AI, I dislike the term AGI, will look like and when or if it will arrive is a huge topic in itself. It's one I've discussed publicly

itself. It's one I've discussed publicly and could write a completely separate essay on. I probably will at some point.

essay on. I probably will at some point.

Obviously, many people are skeptical that powerful AI will be built soon and some are skeptical that it will ever be built at all. I think it could come as early as 2026,

though there are also ways it could take much longer. But for the purposes of

much longer. But for the purposes of this essay, I'd like to put these issues aside, assume it will come reasonably soon, and focus on what happens in the 5 to 10 years after that. I also want to

assume a definition of what such a system will look like, what its capabilities are, and how it interacts, even though there is room for disagreement on this.

By powerful AI, I have in mind an AI model likely similar to today's LLMs in form, though it might be based on a different architecture, might involve several interacting models, and might be

trained differently with the following properties. In terms of pure

properties. In terms of pure intelligence, it is smarter than a Nobel Prize winner across most relevant fields. Biology, programming, math,

fields. Biology, programming, math, engineering, writing, etc. This means it can prove unsolved mathematical theorems, write extremely good novels,

write difficult codebases from scratch, etc. In addition to just being a smart thing you talk to, it is all the interfaces available to a human working virtually,

including text, audio, video, mouse, and keyboard control, and internet access.

It can engage in any actions, communications, or remote operations enabled by this interface, including taking actions on the internet, taking

or giving directions to humans, ordering materials, directing experiments, watching videos, making videos, and so on. It does all of these tasks with,

on. It does all of these tasks with, again, a skill exceeding that of the most capable humans in the world. It

does not just passively answer questions. Instead, it can be given

questions. Instead, it can be given tasks that take hours, days, or weeks to complete, and then goes off and does those tasks autonomously in the way a smart employee would, asking for

clarification as necessary. It does not have a physical embodiment other than living on a computer screen, but it can control existing physical tools, robots,

or laboratory equipment through a computer. In theory, it could even

computer. In theory, it could even design robots or equipment for itself to use. The resources used to train the

use. The resources used to train the model can be repurposed to run millions of instances of it. This matches

projected cluster sizes by around 2027, and the model can absorb information and generate actions at roughly 10 times to 100 times human speed.

It may, however, be limited by the response time of the physical world or of software it interacts with. Each of

these million copies can act independently on unrelated tasks, or if needed, can all work together in the same way humans would collaborate.

Perhaps with different subpopulations fine-tuned to be especially good at particular tasks. We could summarize

particular tasks. We could summarize this as a country of geniuses in a data center. Clearly, such an entity would be

center. Clearly, such an entity would be capable of solving very difficult problems very fast, but it is not trivial to figure out how fast. Two

extreme positions both seem false to me.

First, you might think that the world would be instantly transformed on the scale of seconds or days, the singularity as superior intelligence builds on itself and solves every

possible scientific, engineering, and operational task almost immediately. The

problem with this is that there are real physical and practical limits, for example, around building hardware or conducting biological experiments. Even

a new country of geniuses would hit up against these limits. Intelligence may

be very powerful, but it isn't magic fairy dust. Second, and conversely, you

fairy dust. Second, and conversely, you might believe that technological progress is saturated or rate-limited by real-world data or by social factors, and that better-than-human intelligence

will add very little. This seems equally implausible to me. I can think of hundreds of scientific or even social problems where a large group of really smart people would drastically speed up

progress, especially if they aren't limited to analysis and can make things happen in the real world, which our postulated country of geniuses can, including by directing or assisting

teams of humans. I think the truth is likely to be some messy admixture of these two extreme pictures, something that varies by task and field and is

very subtle in its details. I believe we need new frameworks to think about these details in a productive way. Economists

often talk about factors of production, things like labor, land, and capital.

The phrase marginal returns to labor, land, capital captures the idea that in a given situation, a given factor may or may not be the limiting one. For

example, an Air Force needs both planes and pilots, and hiring more pilots doesn't help much if you're out of planes. I believe that in the AI age, we

planes. I believe that in the AI age, we should be talking about the marginal returns to intelligence and trying to figure out what the other factors are that are complementary to intelligence

and that become limiting factors when intelligence is very high.

We are not used to thinking in this way, to asking how much does being smarter help with this task and on what time scale, but it seems like the right way to conceptualize a world with very

powerful AI. My guess at a list of

powerful AI. My guess at a list of factors that limit or are complementary to intelligence includes speed of the outside world. Intelligent agents need

outside world. Intelligent agents need to operate interactively in the world in order to accomplish things and also to learn, but the world only moves so fast.

Cells and animals run at a fixed speed, so experiments on them take a certain amount of time, which may be irreducible. The same is true of

irreducible. The same is true of hardware, material science, anything involving communicating with people, and even our existing software infrastructure. Furthermore, in science,

infrastructure. Furthermore, in science, many experiments are often needed in sequence, each learning from or building on the last. All of this means that the speed at which a major project, for

example, developing a cancer cure, can be completed may have an irreducible minimum that cannot be decreased further even as intelligence continues to increase. Need for data. Sometimes raw

increase. Need for data. Sometimes raw

data is lacking and in its absence, more intelligence does not help. Today's

particle physicists are very ingenious and have developed a wide range of theories, but lack the data to choose between them because particle accelerator data is so limited. It is

not clear that they would do drastically better if they were super intelligent, other than perhaps by speeding up the construction of a bigger accelerators.

Intrinsic complexity. Some things are inherently unpredictable or chaotic, and even the most powerful AI cannot predict or untangle them substantially better

than a human or a computer today. For

example, even incredibly powerful AI could predict only marginally further ahead in a chaotic system such as the three-body problem in the general case

as compared to today's humans and computers. Constraints from humans. Many

computers. Constraints from humans. Many

things cannot be done without breaking laws, harming humans, or messing up society, and aligned AI would not want to do these things. And if we have an unaligned AI, we're back to talking

about risks.

Many human societal structures are inefficient or even actively harmful, but are hard to change while respecting constraints like legal requirements on clinical trials, people's willingness to

change their habits, or the behavior of governments. Examples of advances that

governments. Examples of advances that work well in a technical sense, but whose impact has been substantially reduced by regulations or misplaced

fears include nuclear power, supersonic flight, and even elevators. Physical

laws. This is a starker version of the first point. There are certain physical

first point. There are certain physical laws that appear to be unbreakable. It's

not possible to travel faster than light. Putting does not unstir. Chips

light. Putting does not unstir. Chips

can only have so many transistors per square centimeter before they become unreliable. Computation requires a

unreliable. Computation requires a certain minimum energy per bit erased, limiting the density of computation in the world. There is a further

the world. There is a further distinction based on timescales. Things

that are hard constraints in the short run may become more malleable to intelligence in the long run. For

example, intelligence might be used to develop a new experimental paradigm that allows us to learn in vitro what used to require live animal experiments, or to build the tools needed to collect new

data, e.g., the bigger particle

data, e.g., the bigger particle accelerator, or to, within ethical limits, find ways around human-based constraints, e.g., helping to improve

constraints, e.g., helping to improve the clinical trial system, helping to create new jurisdictions where clinical trials have less bureaucracy or

improving the science itself to make human clinical trials less necessary or cheaper. Thus, we should imagine a

cheaper. Thus, we should imagine a picture where intelligence is initially heavily bottlenecked by the other factors of production, but over time

intelligence itself increasingly routes around the other factors, even if they never fully dissolve and some things like physical laws are absolute. The key

question is how fast it all happens and in what order. With the above framework in mind, I'll try to answer that question for the five areas mentioned in the introduction. One, biology and

the introduction. One, biology and health.

Biology is probably the area where scientific progress has the greatest potential to directly and unambiguously improve the quality of human life. In

the last century, some of the most ancient human afflictions, such as smallpox, have finally been vanquished, but many more still remain and defeating them would be an enormous humanitarian

accomplishment. Beyond even curing

accomplishment. Beyond even curing disease, biological science can in principle improve the baseline quality of human health by extending the healthy human lifespan, increasing control and

freedom over our own biological processes, and addressing everyday problems that we currently think of as immutable parts of the human condition.

In the limiting factors language of the previous section, the main challenges with directly applying intelligence to biology are data, the speed of the physical world, and intrinsic

complexity. In fact, all three are

complexity. In fact, all three are related to each other.

Human constraints also play a role at a later stage when clinical trials are involved. Let's take these one by one.

involved. Let's take these one by one.

Experiments on cells, animals, and even chemical processes are limited by the speed of the physical world. Many

biological protocols involve culturing bacteria or other cells or simply waiting for chemical reactions to occur and this can sometimes take days or even

weeks with no obvious way to speed it up. Animal experiments can take months

up. Animal experiments can take months or more and human experiments often take years or even decades for long-term outcome studies. Somewhat related to

outcome studies. Somewhat related to this, data is often lacking not so much in quantity but quality. There is always a dearth of clear unambiguous data that

isolates a biological effect of interest from the other 10,000 confounding things that are going on or that intervenes causally in a given process or that directly measures some effect as opposed

to inferring its consequences in some indirect or noisy way.

Even massive quantitative molecular data like the proteomics data that I collected while working on mass spectrometry techniques is noisy and misses a lot. Which types of cells were

these proteins in? Which part of the cell? At what phase in the cell cycle?

cell? At what phase in the cell cycle?

In part responsible for these problems with data is intrinsic complexity. If

you've ever seen a diagram showing the biochemistry of human metabolism, you'll know that it's very hard to isolate the effect of any part of this complex system and even harder to intervene on

the system in a precise or predictable way and finally beyond just the intrinsic time that it takes to run an experiment on humans, actual clinical trials involve a lot of bureaucracy and

regulatory requirements that in the opinion of many people including me add unnecessary additional time and delay progress. Given all this, many

progress. Given all this, many biologists have long been skeptical of the value of AI and big data more generally in biology. Historically,

mathematicians, computer scientists and physicists who have applied their skills to biology over the last 30 years have been quite successful, but have not had

the truly transformative impact initially hoped for. Some of the skepticism has been reduced by major and revolutionary breakthroughs like AlphaFold, which is just deservedly won

its creators the Nobel Prize in chemistry, and AlphaFold Proteo, but there's still a perception that AI is and will continue to be useful in only a

limited set of circumstances. A common

formulation is AI can do a better job analyzing your data, but it can't produce more data or improve the quality of the data. Garbage in, garbage out.

But I think that pessimistic perspective is thinking about AI in the wrong way.

If our core hypothesis about AI progress is correct, then the right way to think of AI is not as a method of data analysis, but as a virtual biologist who

performs all the tasks biologists do, including designing and running experiments in the real world by controlling lab robots or simply telling humans which experiments to run as a principal investigator would to their

graduate students, inventing new biological methods or measurement techniques, and so on. It is by speeding up the whole research process that AI can truly accelerate biology.

I want to repeat this because it's the most common misconception that comes up when I talk about AI's ability to transform biology. I am not talking

transform biology. I am not talking about AI as merely a tool to analyze data. In line with the definition of

data. In line with the definition of powerful AI at the beginning of this essay, I'm talking about using AI to perform, direct, and improve upon nearly

everything biologists do. To get more specific on where I think acceleration is likely to come from, a surprisingly large fraction of the progress in biology has come from a truly tiny

number of discoveries, often related to broad measurement tools or techniques that allow precise but generalized or programmable intervention in biological

systems. There's perhaps roughly one of these major discoveries per year, and collectively they arguably drive 50% of progress in biology. These discoveries

are so powerful precisely because they cut through intrinsic complexity and data limitations, directly increasing our understanding and control over

biological processes. A few discoveries

biological processes. A few discoveries per decade have enabled both the bulk of our basic scientific understanding of biology and have driven many of the most powerful medical treatments. Some

examples include CRISPR, a technique that allows live editing of any gene in living organisms, replacement of any arbitrary gene sequence with any other arbitrary sequence. Since the original

arbitrary sequence. Since the original technique was developed, there have been constant improvements to target specific cell types, increasing accuracy, and

reducing edits of the wrong gene, all of which are needed for safe use in humans.

Various kinds of microscopy for watching what is going on at a precise level, advanced light microscopes with various kinds of fluorescent techniques, special

optics, etc. Electron microscopes, atomic force microscopes, etc. Genome sequencing and synthesis, which has dropped in cost by several orders of

magnitude in the last couple decades.

Optogenetic techniques that allow you to get a neuron to fire by shining a light on it. mRNA vaccines that, in principle,

on it. mRNA vaccines that, in principle, allow us to design a vaccine against anything and then quickly adapt it. mRNA

vaccines, of course, became famous during COVID. Cell therapies such as

during COVID. Cell therapies such as CAR-T that allow immune cells to be taken out of the body and reprogrammed to attack, in principle, anything.

Conceptual insights like the germ theory of disease or the realization of a link between the immune system and cancer.

I'm going to the trouble of listing all these technologies because I want to make a crucial claim about them. I think

their rate of discovery could be increased by 10x or more if there were a lot more talented, creative researchers.

Or, put another way, I think the returns to intelligence are high for these discoveries. And that everything else in

discoveries. And that everything else in biology and medicine mostly follows from them. Why do I think this? Because of

them. Why do I think this? Because of

the answers to some questions that we should get in the habit of asking when we're trying to determine returns to intelligence. First, these discoveries

intelligence. First, these discoveries are generally made by a tiny number of researchers, often the same people repeatedly, suggesting skill and not random search. The latter might suggest

random search. The latter might suggest lengthy experiments are the limiting factor. Second, they often could have

factor. Second, they often could have been made years earlier than they were.

For example, CRISPR was a naturally occurring component of the immune system in bacteria that's been known since the '80s, but it took another 25 years for people to realize it could be repurposed

for general gene editing. They also are often delayed many years by lack of support from the scientific community for promising directions. See this

profile on the inventor of mRNA vaccines. Similar stories abound. Third,

vaccines. Similar stories abound. Third,

successful projects are often scrappy or were afterthoughts that people didn't initially think were promising rather than massively funded efforts. This

suggests that it's not just massive resource concentration that drives discoveries, but ingenuity. Finally,

although some of these discoveries have serial dependence, you need to make discovery A first in order to have the tools or knowledge to make discovery B, which again might create experimental

delays. Many, perhaps most, are

delays. Many, perhaps most, are independent, meaning many at once can be worked on in parallel. Both these facts and my general experience as a biologist strongly suggest to me that there are

hundreds of these discoveries waiting to be made if scientists were smarter and better at making connections between the vast amount of biological knowledge humanity possesses. Again, consider the

humanity possesses. Again, consider the CRISPR example.

The success of AlphaFold AlphaFold AlphaFold AlphaFold AlphaFold at solving important problems much more effectively than humans despite decades of carefully designed physics modeling provides a

proof of principle, albeit with a narrow tool in a narrow domain, that should point the way forward. Thus, it's my guess that powerful AI could at least

10x the rate of these discoveries giving us the next 50 100 years of biological progress in 5 to 10 years. Why not 100x?

Perhaps it is possible, but here both serial dependence and experiment times become important. Getting 100 years of

become important. Getting 100 years of progress in 1 year requires a lot of things to go right the first time including animal experiments and things like designing microscopes or expensive

lab facilities. I'm actually open to the

lab facilities. I'm actually open to the perhaps absurd sounding idea that we could get 1,000 years of progress in 5 to 10 years, but very skeptical that we

can get 100 years in 1 year. Another way

to put it is I think there's an unavoidable constant delay. Experiments

and hardware design have a certain latency and need to be iterated upon a certain irreducible number of times in order to learn things that can't be deduced logically. But massive

deduced logically. But massive parallelism may be possible on top of that. What about clinical trials?

that. What about clinical trials?

Although there is a lot of bureaucracy and slow down associated with them, the truth is that a lot, though by no means all, of their slowness ultimately derives from the need to rigorously

evaluate drugs that barely work or ambiguously work.

This is sadly true of most therapies today. The average cancer drug increases

today. The average cancer drug increases survival by a few months while having significant side effects that need to be carefully measured. There's a similar

carefully measured. There's a similar story for Alzheimer's drugs. This leads

to huge studies in order to achieve statistical power and difficult trade-offs which regulatory agencies generally aren't great at making again because of bureaucracy and the

complexity of competing interests. When

something works really well, it goes much faster. There's an accelerated

much faster. There's an accelerated approval track and the ease of approval is much greater when effect sizes are larger. mRNA vaccines for COVID were

larger. mRNA vaccines for COVID were approved in 9 months, much faster than the usual pace. That said, even under these conditions, clinical trials are

still too slow. mRNA vaccines arguably should have been approved in about 2 months, but these kinds of delays, about 1 year end-to-end for a drug, combined

with massive parallelization and the need for some, but not too much iteration, a few tries, are very compatible with radical transformation

in 5 to to 10 years. Even more

optimistically, it is possible that AI-enabled biological science will reduce the need for iteration in clinical trials by developing better

animal and cell experimental models or even simulations that are more accurate in predicting what will happen in humans. This will be particularly

humans. This will be particularly important in developing drugs against the aging process, which plays out over decades and where we need a faster

iteration loop. Finally, on the topic of

iteration loop. Finally, on the topic of clinical trials and societal barriers, it is worth pointing out explicitly that in some ways, biomedical innovations

have an unusually strong track record of being successfully deployed in contrast to some other technologies. As mentioned

in the introduction, many technologies are hampered by societal factors despite working well technically. This might

suggest a pessimistic perspective on what AI can accomplish, but biomedicine is unique in that although the process of developing drugs is overly cumbersome, once developed, they

generally are successfully deployed and used. To summarize the above, my basic

used. To summarize the above, my basic prediction is that AI-enabled biology and medicine will allow us to compress the progress that human biologists would have achieved over the next 50-100 years

into 5-10 years. I'll refer to this as the compressed 21st century. The idea

that after powerful AI is developed, we will in a few years make all the progress in biology and medicine that we would have made in the whole 21st century. Although predicting what

century. Although predicting what powerful AI can do in a few years remains inherently difficult and speculative, there is some concreteness to asking what could humans do unaided

in the next 100 years.

Simply looking at what we've accomplished in the 20th century or extrapolating from the first two decades of the 21st or asking what 10 CRISPRs

and 50 CAR-Ts would get us, all offer practical, grounded ways to estimate the general level of progress we might expect from powerful AI. Below, I try to

make a list of what we might expect.

This is not based on any rigorous methodology and will almost certainly prove wrong in the details, but it's trying to get across the general level of radicalism we should expect. Reliable

prevention and treatment of nearly all natural infectious disease. Given the

enormous advances against infectious disease in the 20th century, it is not radical to imagine that we could more or less finish the job in a compressed

21st. mRNA vaccines and similar

21st. mRNA vaccines and similar technology already point the way towards vaccines for anything. Whether

infectious disease is fully eradicated from the world, as opposed to just in some places, depends on questions about poverty and inequality, which are discussed in section 3, elimination of

most cancer. Death rates from cancer

most cancer. Death rates from cancer have been dropping shocking 2% per year for the last few decades. Thus, we are on track to eliminate most cancer in the

21st century at the current pace of human science. Some subtypes have

human science. Some subtypes have already been largely cured. For example,

some types of leukemia with CAR-T therapy. And I'm perhaps even more

therapy. And I'm perhaps even more excited for very selective drugs that target cancer in its infancy and prevent it from ever growing. AI will also make

possible treatment regimens very finely adapted to the individualized genome of the cancer. These are possible today,

the cancer. These are possible today, but hugely expensive in time and human expertise, which AI should allow us to scale. Reductions of 95% or more in both

scale. Reductions of 95% or more in both mortality and incidence seem possible.

That said, cancer is extremely varied and adaptive and is likely the hardest of these diseases to fully destroy. It

would not be surprising if an assortment of rare, difficult malignancies persists. Very effective prevention and

persists. Very effective prevention and effective cures for genetic disease.

Greatly improved embryo screening will likely make it possible to prevent most genetic disease. And some safer, more

genetic disease. And some safer, more reliable descendant of CRISPR may cure most genetic disease in existing people.

Whole-body afflictions that affect a large fraction of cells may be the last holdouts, however. Prevention of

holdouts, however. Prevention of Alzheimer's.

We've had a very hard time figuring out what causes Alzheimer's. It is somehow related to beta-amyloid protein, but the actual details seem to be very complex.

It seems like exactly the type of problem that can be solved with better measurement tools that isolate biological effects. Thus, I am bullish

biological effects. Thus, I am bullish about AI's ability to solve it. There is

a good chance it can eventually be prevented with relatively simple interventions once we actually understand what is going on. That said,

damage from already existing Alzheimer's may be very difficult to reverse.

Improved treatment of most other ailments. This is a catch-all category

ailments. This is a catch-all category for other ailments including diabetes, obesity, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, and more. Most of these seem easier to solve than cancer and

Alzheimer's and in many cases are already in steep decline. For example,

deaths from heart disease have already declined over 50% and simple interventions like GLP-1 agonists have already made huge progress against

obesity and diabetes. Biological

freedom. The last 70 years featured advances in birth control, fertility, management of weight, and much more. But

I suspect AI-accelerated biology will greatly expand what is possible. Weight,

physical appearance, reproduction, and other biological processes will be fully under people's control. We'll refer to these under the heading of biological

freedom. The idea that everyone should

freedom. The idea that everyone should be empowered to choose what they want to become and live their lives in the way that most appeals to them. There will,

of course, be important questions about global equality of access. See section

three for these. Doubling of the human lifespan. This might seem radical, but

lifespan. This might seem radical, but life expectancy increased almost 2x in the 20th century from 40 years to 75.

So, it's on trend that the compressed 21st would double it again to 150.

Obviously, the interventions involved in slowing the actual aging process will be different from those that were needed in the last century to prevent mostly childhood premature deaths from disease,

but the magnitude of change is not unprecedented. Concretely, there already

unprecedented. Concretely, there already exist drugs that increase maximum lifespan in rats by 25-50% with limited ill effects. And some

animals, e.g., some types of turtle, already live 200 years. So, humans are manifestly not at some theoretical upper limit. At a guess, the most important

limit. At a guess, the most important thing that is needed might be reliable non-good-heartable biomarkers of human aging, as that will allow fast iteration

on experiments and clinical trials. Once

human lifespan is 150, we may be able to reach escape velocity, buying enough time that most of those currently alive today will be able to live as long as they want. Although there's certainly no

they want. Although there's certainly no guarantee this is biologically possible.

It is worth looking at this list and reflecting on how different the world will be if all of it is achieved 7 to 12 years from now, which would be in line with an aggressive AI timeline.

It goes without saying that it would be an unimaginable humanitarian triumph, the elimination all at once of most of the scourges that have haunted humanity

for millennia. Many of my friends and

for millennia. Many of my friends and colleagues are raising children, and when those children grow up, I hope that any mention of disease will sound to them the way scurvy, smallpox, or

bubonic plague sounds to us. That

generation will also benefit from increased biological freedom and self-expression, and with luck may also be able to live as long as they want.

It's hard to overestimate how surprising these changes will be to everyone except the small community of people who expected powerful AI.

For example, thousands of economists and policy experts in the US currently debate how to keep social security and Medicare solvent, and more broadly, how

to keep down the cost of health care, which is mostly consumed by those over 70, and especially those with terminal illnesses such as cancer. The situation

for these programs is likely to be radically improved if all this comes to pass, as the ratio of working-age to retired population will will drastically.

No doubt these challenges will be replaced with others, such as how to ensure widespread access to the new technologies, but it is worth reflecting on how much the world will change, even

if biology is the only area to be successfully accelerated by AI. Two,

neuroscience and mind.

What in the previous section I focused on physical diseases and biology in general and didn't cover neuroscience or mental health, but neuroscience is a subdiscipline of biology and mental

health is just as important as physical health. In fact, if anything, mental

health. In fact, if anything, mental health affects human well-being even more directly than physical health.

Hundreds of millions of people have very low quality of life due to problems like addiction depression schizophrenia low-functioning autism, PTSD,

psychopathy, or intellectual disabilities. Billions more struggle

disabilities. Billions more struggle with everyday problems that can often be interpreted as much milder versions of one of these severe clinical disorders.

And as with general biology, it may be possible to go beyond addressing problems to improving the baseline quality of human experience.

The basic framework that I laid out for biology applies equally to neuroscience.

The field is propelled forward by a small number of discoveries often related to tools for measurement or precise intervention. In the list of

precise intervention. In the list of those above, optogenetics was a neuroscience discovery and more recently clarity and expansion microscopy are

advances in the same vein, in addition to many of the general cell biology methods directly carrying over to neuroscience. I think the rate of these

neuroscience. I think the rate of these advances will be similarly accelerated by AI and therefore that the framework of 100 years of progress in 5 to 10

years applies to neuroscience in the same way it does to biology and for the same reasons. As in biology, the

same reasons. As in biology, the progress in 20th century neuroscience was enormous. For example, we didn't

was enormous. For example, we didn't even understand how or why neurons fired until the 1950s. Thus, it seems reasonable to expect AI-accelerated

neuroscience to produce rapid progress over a few years. There is one thing we should add to this basic picture, which is that some of the things we've learned or are learning about AI itself in the

last few years are likely to help advance neuroscience even if it continues to be done only by humans.

Interpretability is an obvious example.

Although biological neurons superficially operate in a completely different manner from artificial neurons, they communicate via spikes and often spike rates. So, there is a time

element not present in artificial neurons and a bunch of details relating to cell physiology and neurotransmitters modifies their operation substantially.

The basic question of how do distributed trained networks of simple units that perform combined linear non-linear operations work together to perform important computations is the same and I

strongly suspect the details of individual neuron communication will be abstracted away in most of the interesting questions about computation and circuits. As just one example of

and circuits. As just one example of this, a computational mechanism discovered by interpretability researchers in AI systems was recently rediscovered in the brains of mice. It

is much easier to do experiments on artificial neural networks than on real ones. The latter often requires cutting

ones. The latter often requires cutting into animal brains. So, interpretability

may well become a tool for improving our understanding of neuroscience.

Furthermore, powerful AIs will themselves probably be able to develop and apply this tool better than humans can. Beyond just interpretability,

can. Beyond just interpretability, though, what we have learned from AI about how intelligent systems are trained should, though I am not sure it has yet, cause a revolution in

neuroscience. When I was working in

neuroscience. When I was working in neuroscience, a lot of people focused on what I would now consider the wrong questions about learning because the concept of the scaling hypothesis,

Chinchilla lesson, didn't exist yet. The

idea that a simple objective function plus a lot of data can drive incredibly complex behaviors makes it more interesting to understand the objective

functions and architectural biases and less interesting to understand the details of the emergent computations. I

have not followed the field closely in recent years, but I have a vague sense that computational neuroscientists have still not fully absorbed the lesson. My

attitude to the scaling hypothesis has always been, "Aha, this is an explanation at a high level of how intelligence works and how it's so easily evolved." But I don't think

easily evolved." But I don't think that's the average neuroscientist's view, in part because the scaling hypothesis as the secret to intelligence

isn't fully accepted even within AI. I

think that neuroscientists should be trying to combine this basic insight with the particularities of the human brain, biophysical limitations,

evolutionary history, topology, details of motor and sensory inputs {dot} outputs to try to figure out some of neuroscience's key puzzles.

Some likely are, but I suspect it's not enough yet and that AI neuroscientists will be able to more effectively leverage this angle to accelerate progress. I expect AI to accelerate

progress. I expect AI to accelerate neuroscientific progress along four distinct routes, all of which can hopefully work together to cure mental illness and improve function.

Traditional molecular biology, chemistry, and genetics. This is

essentially the same story as general biology in section one and AI can likely speed it up via the same mechanisms. There are many drugs that modulate neurotransmitters in order to alter

brain function, affect alertness or perception, change mood, etc. And AI can help us invent many more. AI can

probably also accelerate research on the genetic basis of mental illness, fine-grained neural measurement and intervention. This is the ability to

intervention. This is the ability to measure what a lot of individual neurons or neuronal circuits are doing and intervene to change their behavior.

Optogenetics and neural probes are technologies capable of both measurement and intervention in live organisms. And a number of very advanced methods, such as molecular ticker tapes to read out

the firing patterns of large numbers of individual neurons, have also been proposed and seem possible in principle.

Advanced computational neuroscience. As

noted above, both the specific insights and the gestalt of modern AI can probably be applied fruitfully to questions in systems neuroscience, including perhaps uncovering the real

causes and dynamics of complex diseases like psychosis or mood disorders.

Behavioral interventions. I haven't much mentioned it given the focus on the biological side of neuroscience, but psychiatry and psychology have of course developed a wide repertoire of

behavioral interventions over the 20th century. It stands to reason that AI

century. It stands to reason that AI could accelerate these as well. Both the

development of new methods and helping patients to adhere to existing methods.

More broadly, the idea of an AI coach who always helps you to be the best version of yourself, who studies your interactions and helps you learn to be more effective, seems very promising.

It's my guess that these four routes of progress working together would, as with physical disease, be on track to lead to the cure or prevention of most mental

illness in the next 100 years, even if AI was not involved, and thus might reasonably be completed in 5 to 10 AI-accelerated years.

Concretely, my guess at what will happen is something like most mental illness can probably be cured. I'm not an expert in psychiatric disease. My time in neuroscience was spent building probes

to study small groups of neurons. But,

it's my guess that diseases like PTSD, depression schizophrenia addiction etc. can be figured out and very effectively treated via some combination

of the four directions above. The answer

is likely to be some combination of something went wrong biochemically, although it could be very complex, and something went wrong with the neural network at a high level.

That is, it's a systems neuroscience question. Though, that doesn't gainsay

question. Though, that doesn't gainsay the impact of the behavioral interventions discussed above. Tools for

measurement and intervention, especially in live humans, seem likely to lead to rapid iteration and progress. Conditions

that are very structural may be more difficult, but not impossible. There's

some evidence that psychopathy is associated with obvious neuroanatomical differences, that some brain regions are simply smaller or less developed in

psychopaths. Psychopaths are also

psychopaths. Psychopaths are also believed to lack empathy from a young age. Whatever is different about their

age. Whatever is different about their brain, it was probably always that way.

The same may be true of some intellectual disabilities and perhaps other conditions. Restructuring the

other conditions. Restructuring the brain sounds hard, but it also seems like a task with high returns to intelligence. Perhaps there is some way

intelligence. Perhaps there is some way to coax the adult brain into an earlier or more plastic state where it can be reshaped. I'm very uncertain how

reshaped. I'm very uncertain how possible this is, but my instinct is to be optimistic about what AI can invent here. Effective genetic prevention of

here. Effective genetic prevention of mental illness seems possible. Most

mental illness is partially heritable, and genome-wide association studies are starting to gain traction on identifying the relevant factors, which are often many in number. It will probably be

possible to prevent most of these diseases via embryo screening, similar to the story with physical disease. One

difference is that psychiatric disease is more likely to be polygenic, many genes contribute. So due to complexity,

genes contribute. So due to complexity, there's an increased risk of unknowingly selecting against positive traits that are correlated with disease. Oddly,

however, in recent years GWS studies seem to suggest that these correlations might have been overstated. In any case, AI accelerated neuroscience may help us

to figure these things out. Of course,

embryo screening for complex traits raises a number of societal issues and will be controversial, though I would guess that most people would support screening for severe or debilitating mental illness.

Everyday problems that we don't think of as clinical disease will also be solved.

Most of us have everyday psychological problems that are not ordinarily thought of as rising to the level of clinical disease. Some people are quick to anger,

disease. Some people are quick to anger, others have trouble focusing or are often drowsy, some are fearful or anxious or react badly to change. Today,

drugs already exist to help with e.g.

alertness or focus, caffeine, modafinil, Ritalin, but as with many other previous areas, much more is likely to be possible. Probably many more such drugs

possible. Probably many more such drugs exist and have not been discovered, and there may also be totally new modalities of intervention, such as targeted light

stimulation, see optogenetics above, or magnetic fields.

Given how many drugs we've developed in the 20th century that tune cognitive function and emotional state, I'm very optimistic about the compressed 21st, where everyone can get their brain to

behave a bit better and have a more fulfilling day-to-day experience. Human

baseline experience can be much better.

Taking one step further, many people have experienced extraordinary moments of revelation, creative inspiration, compassion fulfillment transcendence

love, beauty, or meditative peace.

The character and frequency of these experiences differs greatly from person to person and within the same person at different times and can also sometimes be triggered by various drugs, though

often with side effects.

All of this suggests that the space of what is possible to experience is very broad and that a larger fraction of people's lives could consist of these

extraordinary moments. It is probably

extraordinary moments. It is probably also possible to improve various cognitive functions across the board.

This is perhaps the neuroscience version of biological freedom or extended lifespans.

One topic that often comes up in sci-fi depictions of AI, but that I intentionally haven't discussed here, is mind uploading. The idea of capturing

mind uploading. The idea of capturing the pattern and dynamics of a human brain and instantiating them in software. This topic could be the

software. This topic could be the subject of an essay all by itself, but suffice it to say that while I think uploading is almost certainly possible in principle, in practice it faces

significant technological and societal challenges even with powerful AI that likely put it outside the 5-10 year window we are discussing.

In summary, AI accelerated neuroscience is likely to vastly improve treatments for or even cure most mental illness as well as greatly expand cognitive and

mental freedom and human cognitive and emotional abilities. It will be every

emotional abilities. It will be every bit as radical as the improvements in physical health described in the previous section. Perhaps the world will

previous section. Perhaps the world will not be visibly different on the outside, but the world as experienced by humans will be a much better and more humane place, as well as a place that offers

greater opportunities for self-actualization.

I also suspect that improved mental health will ameliorate a lot of other societal problems, including ones that seem political or economic. Three,

economic development and poverty.

The previous two sections are about developing new technologies that cure disease and improve the quality of human life. However, an obvious question from

life. However, an obvious question from a humanitarian perspective is, will everyone have access to these technologies?

It is one thing to develop a cure for a disease, it is another thing to eradicate the disease from the world.

More broadly, many existing health interventions have not yet been applied everywhere in the world, and for that matter, the same is true of non-health technological improvements in general.

Another way to say this is that living standards in many parts of the world are still desperately poor. GDP per capita is $2,000 in sub-Saharan Africa as

compared to $75,000 in the United States. If AI further increases economic growth and quality of life in the developed world, while doing little to help the developing world, we

should view that as a terrible moral failure and a blemish on the genuine humanitarian victories in the previous two sections. Ideally, powerful AI

two sections. Ideally, powerful AI should help the developing world catch up to the developed world, even as it revolutionizes the latter. I am not as

confident that AI can address inequality and economic growth as I am that it can invent fundamental technologies, because technology has such obvious high returns

to intelligence, including the ability to root around complexities and lack of data, whereas the economy involves a lot of constraints from humans, as well as a large dose of intrinsic complexity. I am

somewhat skeptical that an AI could solve the famous socialist calculation problem, and I don't think governments will or should turn over their economic

policy to such an entity, even if it could do so.

There are also problems like how to convince people to take treatments that are effective, but that they may be suspicious of. The challenges facing the

suspicious of. The challenges facing the developing world are made even more complicated by pervasive corruption in both private and public sectors.

Corruption creates a vicious cycle. It

exacerbates poverty, and poverty in turn breeds more corruption. AI-driven plans

for economic development need to reckon with corruption, weak institutions, and other very human challenges.

Nevertheless, I do see significant reasons for optimism. Diseases have been eradicated, and many countries have gone from poor to rich, and it is clear that

the decisions involved in these tasks exhibit high returns to intelligence, despite human constraints and complexity. Therefore, AI can likely do

complexity. Therefore, AI can likely do them better than they are currently being done. There may also be targeted

being done. There may also be targeted interventions that get around the human constraints and that AI could focus on.

More importantly, though, we have to try. Both AI companies and developed

try. Both AI companies and developed world policymakers will need to do their part to ensure that the developing world is not left out. The moral imperative is too great. So, in this section, I'll

too great. So, in this section, I'll continue to make the optimistic case, but keep in mind everywhere that success is not guaranteed and depends on our collective efforts. Below, I make some

collective efforts. Below, I make some guesses about how I think things may go in the developing world over the 5 to 10 years after powerful AI is developed.

Distribution of health interventions.

The area where I am perhaps most optimistic is distributing health interventions throughout the world.

Diseases have actually been eradicated by top-down campaigns. Smallpox was

fully eliminated in the 1970s and polio and guinea worm are nearly eradicated with less than 100 cases per year.

Mathematically sophisticated epidemiological modeling plays an active role in disease eradication campaigns and it seems very likely that there is

room for smarter than human AI systems to do a better job of it than humans are.

The logistics of distribution can probably also be greatly optimized. One

thing I learned as an early donor to GiveWell is that some health charities are way more effective than others. The

hope is that AI accelerated efforts would be more effective still.

Additionally, some biological advances actually make the logistics of distribution much easier. For example,

malaria has been difficult to eradicate because it requires treatment each time the disease is contracted. A vaccine

that only needs to be administered once makes the logistics much simpler and such vaccines for malaria are in fact currently being developed. Even simpler

distribution mechanisms are possible.

Some diseases could in principle be eradicated by targeting their animal carriers. For example, releasing

carriers. For example, releasing mosquitoes infected with a bacterium that blocks their ability to carry a disease who then infect all the other mosquitoes or simply using gene drives

to wipe out the mosquitoes.

This requires one or a few centralized actions rather than a coordinated campaign that must individually treat millions. Overall, I think 5 to 10 years

millions. Overall, I think 5 to 10 years is a reasonable timeline for a good fraction, maybe 50% of AI driven health benefits to propagate to even the

poorest countries in the world. A good

goal might be for the developing world 5 to 10 years after powerful AI to at least be substantially healthier than the developed world is today, even if it continues to lag behind the developed

world. Accomplishing this will of course

world. Accomplishing this will of course require a huge effort in global health philanthropy, political advocacy, and many other efforts, which both AI developers and policy makers should help

with. Economic growth.

with. Economic growth.

Can the developing world quickly catch up to the developed world, not just in health, but across the board economically?

There is some precedent for this. In the

final decades of the 20th century, several East Asian economies achieved sustained our 10% annual real GDP growth rates, allowing them to catch up with

the developed world. Human economic

planners made the decisions that led to this success, not by directly controlling entire economies, but by pulling a few key levers, such as an industrial policy of export-led growth,

and resisting the temptation to rely on natural resource wealth. It's plausible

that AI finance ministers and central bankers could replicate or exceed this 10% accomplishment. An important

10% accomplishment. An important question is how to get developing world governments to adopt them while respecting the principle of self-determination. Some may be

self-determination. Some may be enthusiastic about it, but others are likely to be skeptical. On the

optimistic side, many of the health interventions in the previous bullet point are likely to organically increase economic growth. Eradicating AIDS,

economic growth. Eradicating AIDS, malaria, parasitic worms would have a transformative effect on productivity, not to mention the economic benefits that some of the neuroscience

interventions, such as improved mood and focus, would have in developed and developing world alike. Finally,

non-health AI-accelerated technology, such as energy technology, transport drones, improved building materials, better logistics and distribution, and so on, may simply permeate the world

naturally. For example, even cell phones

naturally. For example, even cell phones quickly permeated sub-Saharan Africa via market mechanisms, without needing philanthropic efforts. On the more

philanthropic efforts. On the more negative side, while AI and automation have many potential benefits, they also pose challenges for economic development, particularly for countries

that haven't yet industrialized. Finding

ways to ensure these countries can still develop and improve their economies in an age of increasing automation is an important challenge for economists and policy makers to address. Overall, a

dream scenario, perhaps a goal to aim for, would be 20% annual GDP growth rate in the developing world with 10% each coming from AI-enabled economic

decisions and the natural spread of AI-accelerated technologies, including, but not limited to, health. If achieved,

this would bring sub-Saharan Africa to the current per capita GDP of China in 5 to 10 years, while raising much of the rest of the developing world to levels

higher than the current US GDP. Again,

this is a dream scenario, not what happens by default. It's something all of us must work together to make more likely. Food security, advances in crop

likely. Food security, advances in crop technology like better fertilizers and pesticides, more automation, and more efficient land use drastically increased

crop yields across the 20th century, saving millions of people from hunger.

Genetic engineering is currently improving many crops even further.

Finding even more ways to do this, as well as to make agricultural supply chains even more efficient, could give us an AI-driven second green revolution,

helping close the gap between the developing and developed world.

Mitigating climate change. Climate

change will be felt much more strongly in the developing world, hampering its development. We can expect that AI will

development. We can expect that AI will lead to improvements in technologies that slow or prevent climate change, from atmospheric carbon removal and

clean energy technology to lab-grown meat that reduces our reliance on carbon-intensive factory farming. Of

course, as discussed above, technology isn't the only thing restricting progress on climate change. As with all of the other issues discussed in this essay, human societal factors are

important. But there's good reason to

important. But there's good reason to think that AI-enhanced research will give us the means to make mitigating climate change far less costly and disruptive, rendering many of the

objections moot and freeing up developing countries to make more economic progress.

Inequality within countries.

I've mostly talked about inequality as a global phenomenon, which I do think is its most important manifestation. But of

course, inequality also exists within countries.

With advanced health interventions and especially radical increases in lifespan or cognitive enhancement drugs, there will certainly be valid worries that these technologies are only for the

rich. I am more optimistic about within

rich. I am more optimistic about within country inequality, especially in the developed world, for two reasons. First,

markets function better in the developed world, and markets are typically good at bringing down the cost of high-value technologies over time. Second,

developed world political institutions are more responsive to their citizens and have greater state capacity to execute universal access programs. And I

expect citizens to demand access to technologies that so radically improve quality of life. Of course, it's not predetermined that such demands succeed.

And here is another place where we collectively have to do all we can to ensure a fair society. There is a separate problem in inequality of wealth, as opposed to inequality of

access to life-saving and life-enhancing technologies, which seems harder and which I discuss in section five.

The opt-out problem. One concern in both developed and developing world alike is people opting out of AI-enabled benefits, similar to the anti-vaccine movement or Luddite movements more

generally. There could end up being bad

generally. There could end up being bad feedback cycles where, for example, the people who are least able to make good decisions opt out of the very technologies that improve their

decision-making abilities, leading to an ever-increasing gap and even creating a dystopian underclass. Some researchers

dystopian underclass. Some researchers have argued that this will undermine democracy, a topic I discuss further in the next section.

This would once again place a moral blemish on AI's positive advances. This

is a difficult problem to solve as I don't think it is ethically okay to coerce people, but we can at least try to increase people's scientific understanding, and perhaps AI itself can

help us with this.

One hopeful sign is that historically anti-technology movements have been more bark than bite. Railing against modern technology is popular, but most people adopt it in the end, at least when it's

a matter of individual choice.

Individuals tend to adopt most health and consumer technologies, while technologies that are truly hampered like nuclear power tend to be collective political decisions. Overall, I am

political decisions. Overall, I am optimistic about quickly bringing AI's biological advances to people in the developing world. I am hopeful, though

developing world. I am hopeful, though not confident, that AI can also enable unprecedented economic growth rates and allow the developing world to at least surpass where the developed world is

now. I am concerned about the opt-out

now. I am concerned about the opt-out problem in both the developed and developing world, but suspect that it will peter out over time and that AI can help accelerate this process. It won't

be a perfect world, and those who are behind won't fully catch up, at least not in the first few years. But with

strong efforts on our part, we may be able to get things moving in the right direction and fast. If we do, we can make at least a down payment on the promises of dignity and equality that we

owe to every human being on Earth. Four,

peace and governance.

Now, suppose that everything in the first three sections goes well. Disease,

poverty, and inequality are significantly reduced, and the baseline of human experience is raised substantially. It does not follow that

substantially. It does not follow that all major causes of human suffering are solved. Humans are still a threat to

solved. Humans are still a threat to each other. Although there is a trend of

each other. Although there is a trend of technological improvement and economic development leading to democracy and peace, it is a very loose trend with frequent and recent backsliding. At the

dawn of the 20th century, people thought they had put war behind them. Then came

the two World Wars. 30 years ago, Francis Fukuyama wrote about the end of history and a final triumph of liberal democracy. That hasn't happened yet. 20

democracy. That hasn't happened yet. 20

years ago, US policy makers believed that free trade with China would cause it to liberalize as it became richer.

That very much didn't happen, and we now seem headed for a second Cold War with a resurgent authoritarian block. And

plausible theories suggest that internet technology may actually advantage authoritarianism, not democracy as initially believed, e.g., in the Arab

Spring period. It seems important to try

Spring period. It seems important to try to understand how powerful AI will intersect with these issues of peace, democracy, and freedom. Unfortunately, I

see no strong reason to believe AI will preferentially or structurally advance democracy and peace in the same way that I think it will structurally advance human health and alleviate poverty.

Human conflict is adversarial, and AI can in principle help both the good guys and the bad guys. If anything, some structural factors seem worrying. AI

seems likely to enable much better propaganda and surveillance, both major tools in the autocrat's toolkit. It's

therefore up to us as individual actors to tilt things in the right direction.

If we want AI to favor democracy and individual rights, we are going to have to fight for that outcome.

I feel even more strongly about this than I do about international inequality.

The triumph of liberal democracy and political stability is not guaranteed, perhaps not even likely, and will require great sacrifice and commitment on all of our parts, as it often has in

the past. I think of the issue as having

the past. I think of the issue as having two parts, international conflict and the internal structure of nations. On

the international side, it seems very important that democracies have the upper hand on the world stage when powerful AI is created. AI-powered

authoritarianism seems too terrible to contemplate, so democracies need to be able to set the terms by which powerful AI is brought into the world, both to avoid being overpowered by

authoritarians and to prevent human rights abuses within authoritarian countries. My current guess at the best

countries. My current guess at the best way to do this is via an entente strategy, in which a coalition of democracies seeks to gain a clear

advantage, even just a temporary one, on powerful AI by securing its supply chain, scaling quickly, and blocking or delaying adversaries' access to key

resources like chips and semiconductor equipment. This coalition would on one

equipment. This coalition would on one hand use AI to achieve robust military superiority, the stick, while at the same time offering to distribute the

benefits of powerful AI, the carrot, to a wider and wider group of countries in exchange for supporting the coalition strategy to promote democracy. This

would be a bit analogous to Atoms for Peace.

The coalition would aim to gain the support of more and more of the world, isolating our worst adversaries and eventually putting them in a position where they are better off taking the

same bargain as the rest of the world.

Give up competing with democracies in order to receive all the benefits and not fight a superior foe. If we can do all this, we will have a world in which

democracies lead on the world stage and have the economic and military strength to avoid being undermined, conquered, or sabotaged by autocracies and may be able

to parlay their AI superiority into a durable advantage. This could

durable advantage. This could optimistically lead to an eternal 1991, a world where democracies have the upper hand and Fukuyama's dreams are realized.

Again, this will be very difficult to achieve and will in particular require close cooperation between private AI companies and democratic governments, as

well as extraordinarily wise decisions about the balance between carrot and stick. Even if all that goes well, it

stick. Even if all that goes well, it leaves the question of the fight between democracy and autocracy within each country. It is obviously hard to predict

country. It is obviously hard to predict what will happen here, but I do have some optimism that given a global environment in which democracies control the most powerful AI, then AI may

actually structurally favor democracy everywhere. In particular, in this

everywhere. In particular, in this environment democratic governments can use their superior AI to win the information war. They can counter

information war. They can counter influence and propaganda operations by autocracies and may even be able to create a globally free information environment by providing channels of

information and AI services in a way that autocracies lack the technical ability to block or monitor. It probably

isn't necessary to deliver propaganda, only to counter malicious attacks, and unblock the free flow of information.

Although not immediate, a level playing field like this stands a good chance of gradually tilting global governance towards democracy for several reasons.

First, the increases in quality of life in sections 1-3 should, all things equal, promote democracy. Historically,

they have to at least some extent. In

particular, I expect improvements in mental health, well-being, and education to increase democracy as all three are negatively correlated with support for

authoritarian leaders. In general,

authoritarian leaders. In general, people want more self-expression when their other needs are met, and democracy is among other things a form of self-expression. Conversely,

self-expression. Conversely, authoritarianism thrives on fear and resentment. Second, there is a good

resentment. Second, there is a good chance free information really does undermine authoritarianism as long as the authoritarians can't censor it. And

uncensored AI can also bring individuals powerful tools for undermining repressive governments. Repressive

repressive governments. Repressive governments survive by denying people a certain kind of common knowledge, keeping them from realizing that the emperor has no clothes. For example,

Srđa Popović, who helped to topple the Milošević government in Serbia, has written extensively about techniques for psychologically robbing authoritarians of their power, for breaking the spell,

and rallying support against the dictator.

A superhumanly effective AI version of Popović, whose skills like they have high returns to intelligence, in everyone's pocket, one that dictators

are powerless to block or censor, could create a wind at the backs of dissidents and reformers across the world. To say

it again, this will be a long and protracted fight, one where victory is not assured, but if we design and build AI in the right way, it may at least be a fight where the advocates of freedom

everywhere have an advantage. As with

neuroscience and biology, we can also ask how things could be better than normal, not just how to avoid autocracy, but how to make democracies better than

they are today. Even within democracies, injustices happen all the time. Rule of

law societies make a promise to their citizens that everyone will be equal under the law, and everyone is entitled to basic human rights. But obviously,

people do not always receive those rights in practice. That this promise is even partially fulfilled makes it something to be proud of, but can AI help us do better? For example, could AI

improve our legal and judicial system by making decisions and processes more impartial? Today, people mostly worry in

impartial? Today, people mostly worry in legal or judicial context that AI systems will be a cause of discrimination, and these worries are important and need to be defended against.

At the same time, the vitality of democracy depends on harnessing new technologies to improve democratic institutions, not just responding to

risks. A truly mature and successful

risks. A truly mature and successful implementation of AI has the potential to reduce bias and be fairer for everyone. For centuries, legal systems

everyone. For centuries, legal systems have faced the dilemma that the law aims to be impartial, but is inherently subjective and thus must be interpreted

by biased humans. Trying to make the law fully mechanical hasn't worked because the real world is messy and can't always be captured in mathematical formulas.

Instead, legal systems rely on notoriously imprecise criteria like cruel and unusual punishment or utterly without redeeming social importance,

which humans then interpret and often do so in a manner that displays bias, favoritism, or arbitrariness.

Smart contracts and cryptocurrencies haven't revolutionized law because ordinary code isn't smart enough to adjudicate all that much of interest, but AI might be smart enough for this.

It is the first technology capable of making broad, fuzzy judgments in a repeatable and mechanical way. I am not suggesting that we literally replace judges with AI systems, but the

combination of impartiality with the ability to understand and process messy real-world situations feels like it should have some serious positive applications to law and justice. At the

very least such systems could work alongside humans as an aid to decision-making. Transparency would be

decision-making. Transparency would be important in any such system and a mature science of AI could conceivably provide it. The training process for

provide it. The training process for such systems could be extensively studied and advanced interpretability techniques could be used to see inside the final model and assess it for hidden

biases in a way that is simply not possible with humans. Such AI tools could also be used to monitor for violations of fundamental rights in a judicial or police context, making

constitutions more self-enforcing. In a

similar vein, AI could be used to both aggregate opinions and drive consensus among citizens, resolving conflict, finding common ground, and seeking

compromise. Some early ideas in this

compromise. Some early ideas in this direction have been undertaken by the computational democracy project, including collaborations with Anthropic.

A more informed and thoughtful citizenry would obviously strengthen democratic institutions. There is also a clear

institutions. There is also a clear opportunity for AI to be used to help provision government services, such as health benefits or social services, that are in principle available to everyone,

but in practice often severely lacking and worse in some places than others.

This includes health services, the DMV, taxes, social security, building code enforcement, and so on. Having a a thoughtful and informed AI whose job is to give you everything you're legally

entitled to by the government in a way you can understand and who also helps you comply with often confusing government rules would be a big deal.

Increasing state capacity both helps to deliver on the promise of equality under the law and strengthens respect for democratic governance.

Poorly implemented services are currently a major driver of cynicism about government. All of these are

about government. All of these are somewhat vague ideas and as I said at the beginning of this section, I am not nearly as confident in their feasibility as I am in the advances in biology,

neuroscience, and poverty alleviation.

They may be unrealistically utopian, but the important thing is to have an ambitious vision, to be willing to dream big and try things out. The vision of AI as a guarantor of liberty, individual

rights, and equality under the law is too powerful a vision not to fight for.

A 21st century AI-enabled polity could be both a stronger protector of individual freedom and a beacon of hope that helps make liberal democracy the form of government that the whole world

wants to adopt. Five,

work and meaning.

Even if everything in the preceding four sections goes well, not only do we alleviate disease, poverty, and inequality, but liberal democracy becomes the dominant form of government

and existing liberal democracies become better versions of themselves, at least one important question still remains.

It's great we live in such a technologically advanced world as well as a fair and decent one, someone might object. But with AIs doing everything,

object. But with AIs doing everything, how will humans have meaning? For that

matter, how will they survive economically?

I think this question is more difficult than the others. I don't mean that I am necessarily more pessimistic about it than I am about the other questions, although I do see challenges. I mean

that it is fuzzier and harder to predict in advance because it relates to macroscopic questions about how society is organized that tend to resolve themselves only over time and in a

decentralized manner. For example,

decentralized manner. For example, historical hunter-gatherer societies might have imagined that life is meaningless without hunting and various kinds of hunting-related religious

rituals and would have imagined that our well-fed technological society is devoid of purpose. They might also have not

of purpose. They might also have not understood how our economy can provide for everyone or what function people can usefully service in a mechanized society. Nevertheless, it's worth saying

society. Nevertheless, it's worth saying at least a few words while keeping in mind that the brevity of this section is not at all to be taken as a sign that I don't take these issues seriously. On

the contrary, it is a sign of a lack of clear answers. On the question of

clear answers. On the question of meaning, I think it is very likely a mistake to believe that tasks you undertake are meaningless simply because an AI could do them better.

Most people are not the best in the world at anything and it doesn't seem to bother them particularly much. Of

course, today they can still contribute through comparative advantage and may derive meaning from the economic value they produce, but people also greatly enjoy activities that produce no

economic value. I spend plenty of time

economic value. I spend plenty of time playing video games, swimming, walking around outside, and talking to friends, all of which generates zero economic

value. I might spend a day trying to get

value. I might spend a day trying to get better at a video game or faster at biking up a mountain and it doesn't really matter to me that someone somewhere is much better at those

things. In any case, I think meaning

things. In any case, I think meaning comes mostly from human relationships and connection, not from economic labor.

People do want a sense of accomplishment, even a sense of competition, and in a post-AI world, it will be perfectly possible to spend years attempting some very difficult

task with a complex strategy similar to what people do today when they embark on research projects, try to become Hollywood actors, or found companies.

The facts that A, an AI somewhere could in principle do this task better, and B, this task is no longer an economically rewarded element of a global economy,

don't seem to me to matter very much.

The economic piece actually seems more difficult to me than the meaning piece.

By economic in this section, I mean the possible problem that most or all humans may not be able to contribute meaningfully to a sufficiently advanced AI-driven economy. This is a more macro

AI-driven economy. This is a more macro problem than the separate problem of inequality, especially inequality in access to the new technologies, which I discussed in section three.

First of all, in the short term, I agree with arguments that comparative advantage will continue to keep humans relevant, and in fact, increase their productivity, and may even in some ways

level the playing field between humans.

As long as AI is only better at 90% of a given job, the other 10% will cause humans to become highly leveraged, increasing compensation, and in fact,

creating a bunch of new human jobs, complementing and amplifying what AI is good at, such that the 10% expands to continue to employ almost everyone. In

fact, even if AI can do 100% of things better than humans, but it remains inefficient or expensive at some tasks, or if the resource inputs to humans and

AIs are meaningfully different, then the logic of comparative advantage continues to apply. One area humans are likely to

to apply. One area humans are likely to maintain a relative or even absolute advantage for a significant time is the physical world. Thus, I think that the

physical world. Thus, I think that the human economy may continue to make sense even a little past the point where where reach a country of geniuses in a data center. However, I do think in the long

center. However, I do think in the long run AI will become so broadly effective and so cheap that this will no longer apply. At that point, our current

apply. At that point, our current economic setup will no longer make sense and there will be a need for a broader societal conversation about how the economy should be organized. While that

might sound crazy, the fact is that civilization has successfully navigated major economic shifts in the past from hunter-gathering to farming, farming to

feudalism, and feudalism to industrialism. I suspect that some new

industrialism. I suspect that some new and stranger thing will be needed and that it's something no one today has done a good job of envisioning. It could

be as simple as a large universal basic income for everyone. Although, I suspect that will only be a small part of a solution. It could be a capitalist

solution. It could be a capitalist economy of AI systems which then give out resources, huge amounts of them since the overall economic pie will be gigantic to humans based on some

secondary economy of what the AI systems think makes sense to reward in humans based on some judgment ultimately derived from human values.

Perhaps the economy runs on wuffy points or perhaps humans will continue to be economically valuable after all in some way not anticipated by the usual economic models. All of these solutions

economic models. All of these solutions have tons of possible problems and it's not possible to know whether they will make sense without lots of iteration and experimentation. And as with some of the

experimentation. And as with some of the other challenges, we will likely have to fight to get a good outcome here.

Exploitative or dystopian directions are clearly also possible and have to be prevented. Much more could be written

prevented. Much more could be written about these questions and I hope to do so at some later time. Taking stock.

Through the varied topics above, I've tried to lay out a vision of a world that is both plausible if everything goes right with AI and much better than the world today. I don't know if this

world is realistic and even if it is, it will not be achieved without a huge amount of effort and struggle by many brave and dedicated people. Everyone,

including AI companies, will need to do their part both to prevent risks and to fully realize the benefits, but it is a world worth fighting for. If all of this

really does happen over 5 to 10 years, the defeat of most diseases, the growth in biological and cognitive freedom, the lifting of billions of people out of poverty to share in the new

technologies, a renaissance of liberal democracy and human rights, I suspect everyone watching it will be surprised by the effect it has on them.

I don't mean the experience of personally benefiting from all the new technologies, although that will certainly be amazing. I mean the experience of watching a long-held set

of ideals materialize in front of us all at once. I think many will be literally

at once. I think many will be literally moved to tears by it.

Throughout writing this essay, I noticed an interesting tension. In one sense, the vision laid out here is extremely radical. It is not what almost anyone

radical. It is not what almost anyone expects to happen in the next decade and will likely strike many as an absurd fantasy. Some may not even consider it

fantasy. Some may not even consider it desirable. It embodies values and

desirable. It embodies values and political choices that not everyone will agree with. But at the same time, there

agree with. But at the same time, there is something blindingly obvious, something overdetermined about it, as if many different attempts to envision a

good world inevitably lead roughly here.

In Iain M. Banks' The Player of Games, the protagonist, a member of a society called the Culture, which is based on principles not unlike those I've laid out here, travels to a repressive,

militaristic empire in which leadership is determined by competition in an intricate battle game. The game,

however, is complex enough that a player's strategy within it tends to reflect their own political and philosophical outlook. The protagonist

philosophical outlook. The protagonist manages to defeat the emperor in the game, showing that his values, the culture's values, represent a winning

strategy even in a game designed by a society based on ruthless competition and survival of the fittest. A

well-known post by Scott Alexander has the same thesis, that competition is self-defeating and tends to lead to a society based on compassion and cooperation. The arc of the moral

cooperation. The arc of the moral universe is another similar concept. I

think the culture's values are a winning strategy because they're the sum of a million small decisions that have clear moral force and that tend to pull

everyone together onto the same side.

Basic human intuitions of fairness, cooperation, curiosity, and autonomy are hard to argue with and are cumulative in a way that our more destructive impulses

often aren't. It is easy to argue that

often aren't. It is easy to argue that children shouldn't die of disease if we can prevent it and easy from there to argue that everyone's children deserve that right equally. From there, it is

not hard to argue that we should all band together and apply our intellects to achieve this outcome. Few disagree

that people should be punished for attacking or hurting others unnecessarily and from there, it's not much of a leap to the idea that punishments should be consistent and systematic across people. It is

similarly intuitive that people should have autonomy and responsibility over their own lives and choices. These

simple intuitions, if taken to their logical conclusion, lead eventually to rule of law, democracy, and enlightenment values. If not inevitably,

enlightenment values. If not inevitably, then at least as a statistical tendency, this is where humanity was already headed. AI simply offers an opportunity

headed. AI simply offers an opportunity to get us there more quickly, to make the logic starker and the destination clearer. Nevertheless, it is a thing of

clearer. Nevertheless, it is a thing of transcendent beauty. We have the

transcendent beauty. We have the opportunity to play some small role in making it real.