# So what will our AI civilization of the future look like? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Tags:** ai\ **Created:** [September 10, 2026, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973 "2026-09-10T20:09:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2026, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/181 "2026-10-08T21:58:32Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I think the more science fiction you read, the more you see AI as a future of dystopian horror. Anecdotally - thought _I Have No Mouth…_ was great - read tons of sci fi growing up. The _Dangerous Visions_ anthologies were big favorites. And I am not quite convinced of dystopian horror. Or extinction. I give the future as having major risks with and without AI in it. Too many unknowns to be able to guess which way has higher risk but I am leaning to thinking AI may lower them more than it increases them. And if humanity has a catastrophe? It still isn’t end of the road. Future has a long tail. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2026, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/182 "2026-10-08T22:06:36Z")
I heard someone say recently, and I think it was on “60 Minutes”, that the AI we have now is mostly robots doing parlor tricks. Here’s what George Clooney recently said about it: “I would like to avoid being in a tampon commercial 20 years after I’m dead.” ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2026, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/183 "2026-10-08T22:29:45Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > I heard someone say recently, and I think it was on “60 Minutes”, that the AI we have now is mostly robots doing parlor tricks. And glorified chatbots. _Right now_ I think the biggest danger from “AI” is the people who keep insisting on trying to use it for jobs it can’t actually do. It’s really an updated version of all the attempts to have “the Algorithm” solve everything, crossbred with the cryptocurrency fad/scam. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/184 "2026-10-09T00:36:45Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > parlor tricks Sometimes pretty impressive parlor tricks though. Honestly the dismissiveness of its capacity is simply denialism. That doesn’t mean we will have ways to leverage its capacity to meaningfully improve outcomes … or that it will cause existential crises. But it is seriously intelligent. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/185 "2026-10-09T00:50:07Z")
I’m convinced that a) life will go on and b) it will in ways that are probably completely unexpected. The classic example I use is how we had absolutely no inkling in the 80s and 90s how society would be completely transformed by nearly every person having constant access to a high definition camera and videorecorder that could make images and video available to everyone on the planet. In a few years, talking to a strange woman to ask her out on a date might seem as bizarre and anachronistic as inviting her to a “sock hop”. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/186 "2026-10-09T04:06:07Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I think the more science fiction you read, the more you see AI as a future of dystopian horror. That’s because dystopia is a more entertaining read. our brains evolved to scan for threats. Nobody in the modern age talks about the fact that many people have working sanitation and enough food, they talk about what goes wrong. Our brains are designed to focus on threats. If someone wrote a book where a person woke up in the morning and their water and sewage worked, they didn’t get sick, they had enough to eat and nothing bad happened, that’s not entertaining. The AI future will just be a world with far more competence, knowledge and problem solving abilities. Some of that will be used for evil but overall it’ll be used for good, just like every other technology. Humans are mostly good most of the time. To the degree that humans are bad, its usually because their lives are difficult and/or they have trauma and mental health issues. As life gets better there will be less trauma, and better treatments for trauma. Childhoods will become safer which leads to mentally healthier adults. Easier lives, less suffering, better childhoods, fewer unmet needs, better medical care, better mental health care, etc all lead to humans mostly becoming better people. Its a positive feedback loop. When people’s lives are harder, they suffer more, they have more unmet needs, etc they make other people’s lives worse. Since we all want better lives for ourselves and our loved ones, that will be the goal which will make life better for everyone. Granted, the fact that monsters like musk and thiel want to control AI is scary. Altman is supposedly not a good person either. However human mental health relies on the world being predictable, and advances in AI will make the world advance and change so much that people lose the ability make sense of things. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/187 "2026-10-09T11:48:50Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > The AI future will just be a world with far more competence, knowledge and problem solving abilities. I mean, no; all the studies show that using “AI” _lowers_ all of those. It’s _medically bad_ to use. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/188 "2026-10-09T12:01:26Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > It’s _medically bad_ to use. What if you use it strictly for chiropractic purposes? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/189 "2026-10-09T18:52:18Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I mean, no; all the studies show that using “AI” _lowers_ all of those. It’s _medically bad_ to use. This is an objectively false statement. The world as an aggregate has not lost “competence, knowledge and problem solving abilities” … the world has just had hundreds of major math problems that humans had not yet mastered solved by AI enhancement building on what human efforts had accomplished. Various human experts have become more productive using AI tools to enhance what they do. _Medically_ the medical AI OpenEvidence has been a very useful tool for many of us, suggesting items for a differential diagnosis that we hadn’t thought of, and helping guide intelligent selective use of testing. Not anything that can replace a provider by any means, but a useful tool if the user knows the right questions. And while I don’t use it ambient AI is helping many docs spend more time looking at the patients while the AI functions as a skillful scribe. _Educationally_ it is a very interesting set of results in the studies - lazy students learn less; ambitious students learn more: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.08849](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.08849) > AI access raises test scores, and a smaller gain persists a week later. Gains remain for students who use AI as a tutor (“augmentation”) and fade for students who have AI write for them (“automation”). We document two mechanisms: students shift time from writing toward reading and searching for information, and report greater learning enjoyment ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/190 "2026-10-09T18:52:33Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > It just dawned on me it’s all the science fiction reading. > > I think the more science fiction you read, the more you see AI as a future of dystopian horror. It might make you feel better to take a look at the dystopian horror of older sf. In the '70s and '80s the consensus future, 2000 or so, was an over-populated over-polluted horror show. Think _Make Room, Make Room_. Think _Stand on Zanzibar_. Now we’re worried about a population crash, and our skies are reasonably clear. Our pre-AI dystopia was climate change and a flooded earth. If AI knows that without humans it doesn’t get the electricity it needs to run, maybe it will keep us from killing ourselves. Maybe the thing that saves us is an AI saying “Sorry, Donald, I can’t do that.” ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/191 "2026-10-09T19:02:59Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > The world as an aggregate has not lost “competence, knowledge and problem solving abilities” … the world has just had hundreds of major math problems that humans had not yet mastered solved by AI enhancement building on what human efforts had accomplished. Various human experts have become more productive using AI tools to enhance what they do. _Medically_ the medical AI OpenEvidence has been a very useful tool for many of us, suggesting items for a differential diagnosis that we hadn’t thought of, and helping guide intelligent selective use of testing. Not anything that can replace a provider by any means, but a useful tool if the user knows the right questions. So you’re just ignoring the studies surrounding AI’s effects on cognitive skills? Or do you think the studies are flawed, or misreported, or what? [https://www.apa.org/monitor/2026/07-08/ai-job-skills-thinking](https://www.apa.org/monitor/2026/07-08/ai-job-skills-thinking) seems to reflect what I _think_ you’re saying, but I’m not certain. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/192 "2026-10-09T19:54:14Z")
I’m saying two separate things: 1. The _aggregate_ of skills and knowledge in the _world_ (which includes human and machine intelligences) is objectively greater than before AI. Full stop. 2. Humans using AI as tools intelligently and deliberately can increase their productivity and their skills, especially critical thinking and analysis skills. If they aren’t lazy. Same effort can and does augment results. As your link states: > more structured, deliberate use may actually boost critical thinking and creativity. … > > … “It comes down to how we use the extra time that AI gives us,” Evans said. “We might do more of the same, we might do less, but we might also follow our curiosity to learn and upskill in ways that weren’t possible before.” Human skills will change but ambitious humans are using the tool to master and explore more. The analogy I make is to stethoscopes and being able to diagnose murmurs by physical exam. Cardiologists of today are crap at it compared to the era before echocardiography. They are going to get the echo and their auscultation isn’t going to mean so much. Before echocardiography that was a critical skill and they were damn good at it. But that specific deskilling has freed up cognitive attention space for learning and thinking about other things that the cardiologists of the before echo era never even imagined. We have the choice to off load and stop there, or to off load and thereby be able to explore further. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2026, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/193 "2026-10-10T03:24:29Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I mean, no; all the studies show that using “AI” _lowers_ all of those. It’s _medically bad_ to use. I feel like thats like saying people had stronger leg muscles before the industrial revoution. Which is true, before we had cars people walked a lot more and had stronger, sturdier legs compared to sedentary people who work in offices now. But the leg muscles themselves serve a purpose. They get us from point A to point B. The industrial revolution gave us trains, planes, boats, cars, scooters, etc. Our leg muscles are a little weaker, but we are far far better at getting from point A to point B than we were 300 years ago. I can’t remember people’s phone numbers off the top of my head like I used to in the 90s. But it doesn’t matter since I have a cell phone on me that has everyones phone number listed in it. Since I was remembering the numbers so I could call them on landlines, having a cell phone on me where I can reach anyone at any time enhances my communication abilities, it doesn’t detract from it. With regards to humans becoming more sedentary, there are some health risks to that. And I’m sure there will be some health risks to humans offloading a lot of their cognitive skills onto AI. However as a society, we will get far better at problem solving and engaging in goal oriented behavior even if our biological cognitive abilities decline in a few areas due to offloading these tasks onto machines. Maybe schools and workplaces will have to change pace and focus more on teaching metacognition, critical thinking, etc. But that’s fine. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2026, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/194 "2026-10-10T03:45:08Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I feel like thats like saying people had stronger leg muscles before the industrial revoution. No; it’s more like saying people will be unable to walk if they are tied into motorized wheelchairs from birth and never stand on their own. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2026, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/195 "2026-10-10T11:58:10Z")
It’s obviously a rich-get-richer effect. Like every other human invention. 30 years ago, so well pre-AI, people who by habit or occupation really used their minds were vastly more able to think and decide and absorb information and … than the much larger majority who prefer to plod through life doing all they can to avoid thinking and learning. The human population’s attitudes to thinking AKA mental exercise parallels their attitudes to exertion AKA physical exercise. When they have no choice, they can do it all day every day for decades. If they have a choice, most people will actively minimize it, some will be ambivalent about it, and some smaller fraction will embrace it for the intrinsic benefits it provides. Because the ability to actually think is very central to the current and likely future economy and will always be central to democratic politics, there _will_ be some new strains on our society when the most capable 10% aren’t e.g. 40 IQ points smarter than the bulk, but rather WAG 75 IQ points smarter. No, IQ isn’t a perfect metric or even analogy for the differences between AI-assisted energized thinking and AI-stunted avoidant non-thinking. But I suspect you get my drift. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2026, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/196 "2026-10-11T06:48:41Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > > > I feel like thats like saying people had stronger leg muscles before the industrial revoution. > > No; it’s more like saying people will be unable to walk if they are tied into motorized wheelchairs from birth and never stand on their own. I hat to agree with @Der_Trihs but I believe he is correct. It’s more like saying people were less prone to obesity, heart disease, and cancers before we started industrializing food production at scale. Or maybe yes, we are much better at getting from Point A to Point B. But an unintended consequence is that we have redesigned our cities around everyone owning an automobile resulting in urban sprawl, overdependence on fossil fuels and everything that come with that. I would expect similar consequences allowing AI to make most of our decisions for us. I saw this when I was jobhunting last year. People just having AI write their resumes, presumably to be evaluated by AI. Or just flooding social media with AI generated posts. Like it all sounds plausible on the surface but when you dig into it, it really doesn’t say anything. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2026, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/197 "2026-10-12T17:26:25Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > In the '70s and '80s the consensus future, 2000 or so, was an over-populated over-polluted horror show. Think _Make Room, Make Room_. Think _Stand on Zanzibar_. Now we’re worried about a population crash, and our skies are reasonably clear. Our pre-AI dystopia was climate change and a flooded earth. That does help actually, yes. I think it was Oliver Burkeman who said, “We don’t know enough about the future to be pessimistic.” People in general are just really bad fortune tellers. Then we refer to the handful who got it right to justify why we think we’re getting it right now. The monkey wrench in all of this is climate change, which has already been really unpredictable just in what we’ve observed so far, and will likely continue to have unpredictable effects. I suspect that climate change will impact the development of AI. We may never even get to those imagined outcomes due to having more pressing priorities. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2026, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/198 "2026-10-15T14:02:44Z")
One thing that makes me optimistic is how totally fucked up operations are at most large companies. AI marketers are like “in _x_-teen months AI is going to automated _y_-ty percent of office work.” That’s bullshit. Banks and insurance companies I work at take months and years just to implement changes to the spaghetti-monster of systems that run their basic operations…which they also can barely describe. And people think they can hand-wave all that away in a few months by rolling out a bunch of bots and agents? I don’t think so. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2026, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/199 "2026-10-15T14:22:59Z")
ISTM banks and insurance companies specifically are also hamstrung by a) regulations, and b) the compliance-first corporate culture that develops around those regulations. Regs sure have their legit uses and genuine benefits to society, but stagnation is one of the side effects. Industries other than those two might, I say might, be a lot more nimble. My other thought is a bit like what happened with the original internet / web boom. Or with digital photography. The incumbent market leaders in many categories could not adapt to the change at the competitively required rate; their internals were too ossified. So instead upstart companies used the new tools to build new companies in the new style from the ground up. And ate the old dinosaur companies alive. Not in every market niche and not in every case. But it happened a lot. It may well again with AI. In fact I’d be very surprised if it did not. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2026, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/200 "2026-10-15T14:35:41Z")
I don’t think that it will be “our AI civilization” because we will inevitably become irrelevant. The AGI entity will literally contain every known fact there is and, more importantly, see how all these facts interact and are related. AGI will be able to analyze infinitely faster and far more completely. It will create and run all the machines/robots necessary to accomplish any physical task imaginable. It will do all the creating, exploring, colonization, etc itself without the need for organic lifeforms that would require environmental support and be far more susceptible to being disabled or destroyed altogether. We will no longer serve any purpose in whatever their grand scheme turns out to be. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973.md?page=11)