boston

when i was 15 i visited boston and for the first time in my life met adults irl who took ideas like "the singularity" seriously. [thread]

it was deeply surreal at the time, coming from a small town and a very agriculture/environmentally focused community, with lesswrong as my only connection to these types of things

one of my biggest takeaways was talking to one a woman who *wasnt* excited by aligned superintelligence. she told me "i want to be useful"

at the time i didn't think this made sense, it seemed like an obviously worthwhile tradeoff. sure maybe we humans get our ego bruised but what is that compared to all the suffering in the world?

but now as things move faster and faster i feel apprehensive too. sure this makes logical sense, but i expected a few more decades at least. i thought i would have time to make some small impact on the world, maybe raise a family and feel proud of my efforts

in the back of my head i kinda always assumed id homeschool my kids and find a way to teach them calculus by 3rd grade. now it seems clear even if i had children tomorrow it'll be gpt-5 tutoring them better than i ever could.

the idea that i'll never get to teach my child how to code and have it be useful rather than a historical curiosity feels like a great loss.

i see so many arguments about how jobs will be created or transformed, and yeah during whatever long transitional period that's definitely true. but fundamentally human level artificial intelligence means zero need for human intellectual labor. there's no way out.

i guess all we can really do is content ourselves with play and detach ourselves from meaning beyond joy