[ExI] MiNTing (or if you must, APM) library

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2013-10-28 05:17, paul michael wrote:
>  That is why I'm worried, transitional times destroy, they also create 
> but creating takes time. Shopkeepers, shoe salesmen, people who just 
> are living week to week will really need WYSIWYG with respect to this 
> 'box'.

WYSIWYG does not solve the problem. The laser printer and windowing 
system did not turn everybody into a graphics designer or author. To 
actually make something useful with a box you need to understand the 
right kind of engineering, hacking and design. It is likely a mindset 
rather than a skillset, and not everybody can get it.

In a world where you could get anything you could imagine, the people 
with poor imagination would still be losers. And they cannot easily 
imagine a better imagination.

But this is separate from the inherent turbulence of transitions. I 
think APM is going to be much less dramatic than we commonly think here 
simply because it just transforms a lot of manufacturing, retail and 
transport - important parts of the economy, but already a fairly thin 
slice of the overall cake. It is technologies like AI that transform 
services - the big pie slice - that really will change the economy. Yes, 
APM will make our material culture quite different. But it doesn't 
change the service backbone. And being less disruptive than AI doesn't 
mean it is going to be minor - I would expect at least a few major power 
losing out in the transition.

-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University

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