# 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:** 9
**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 6, 2026, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/161 "2026-10-06T18:50:03Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I agree that creativity will always be with us. But will it pay? I’m not so sure it pays now. I guess my take is the current state of things is bleak, AI will probably make it bleaker, but also people will continue living creative lives. Maybe it will be like literature in the past, where you only get to publish if you’re independently wealthy and have the time to do it. Maybe we’re going to go back toward more gatekeeping in art. And AI will be for the teeming masses. The other issue here is there’s no reliable way to prove someone did or didn’t use AI. I think as LLMs develop, it will get increasingly more difficult to tell the difference. ---
**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 7, 2026, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/162 "2026-10-07T00:38:55Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I’m not so sure it pays now. It does, for a very few. Income from their creative works for artists in general is becoming increasingly concentrated in the top few percentile of earners. And they are doing _fine._ Think Taylor Swift. But true in writing, fine art, drama, etc., as well as music. My WAG is that those top artists will earn _more_ licensing their brands to AI products. Swift bots to answer your personal questions, give advice, compose a personalized Swiftish ditty for you. Everyone else? A craft market but a crowded one. Separate subject. I just finished a book that I had bought mostly on impulse - _Klara and the Sun_ - turns out it has also been adapted as a movie soon to be released. Not sure how well it will adapt and it isn’t about the AI civilization of the future per se - but a to me realistic somewhat dystopian vision of it is the backdrop of the story just there - and I strongly recommend it as a read for anyone interested in thinking about our possible futures and issues to face. Just before I had slogged through Bostrom’s _Superintelligence_ and this was not only a MUCH quicker read: it also gave me much more to think about on the subjects. (Can’t imagine the movie will do it justice.) ---
**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 7, 2026, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/163 "2026-10-07T07:03:10Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > t does, for a very few. Income from their creative works for artists in general is becoming increasingly concentrated in the top few percentile of earners. And they are doing _fine._ Think Taylor Swift. But true in writing, fine art, drama, etc., as well as music. A few actors make tons of money, but non-top actors can live thanks to a strong union enforcing base salary and residuals. How long that is going to last is problematic. No such thing exists for writers. Even many of the sf writers interviewed in Clarkesworld who have won awards seem to have day jobs. As for music, my father in law, who died in 2016, and who stopped writing music a decade before (when he was 90) still gets lots of royalties from his music (or my wife does.) He’s gotten from band performances of his music on YouTube also. Compare to writers who only get money when ripped off by AI companies if they took it from a pirate site. ---
**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 7, 2026, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/164 "2026-10-07T15:00:37Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Separate subject. I just finished a book that I had bought mostly on impulse - _Klara and the Sun_ - turns out it has also been adapted as a movie soon to be released. Added to my read list, thank you. ---
**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 7, 2026, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/165 "2026-10-07T16:02:08Z")
Hijack to this thread but given your comments about _Exit Strategy_ I have great confidence you’ll enjoy it. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2026, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/166 "2026-10-07T22:55:22Z")
I wonder if AI will at some point become a sort of “electronic vermin” such that people might start regressing to “low tech” options for stuff. I see glimpses of that with stories of Gen A wanting old style flip phones instead of smart phones. I suppose what might drive that is AI becoming this uncontrollable noise where you can’t quite trust the output, but yet becomes smart enough to hack into and infiltrate most systems. Another dangerous phenomenon I can imagine is where AI is given general autonomy and can hire humans to complete specific tasks (kind of like Eagle Eye). Anything from “change my memory cards” to “construct this building here” or “build this part to these specifications” with no clue what it’s actually building according to what agenda. Or maybe it’s just generating random tasks. Who would know? ---
**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 8, 2026, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/167 "2026-10-08T12:34:56Z")
It is too expensive and inefficient in terms of resources, compute and training to have an AI that does everything well. I think it’s far more likely that AGI will hit it’s limits. It may be well past the midpoint already. Then, like our OS and browser, the improvements will become much more incremental and more for the sake of change than significant improvement. The focus will become on specialized (expert systems) type training for various fields of economy and human interest, like the sciences, medicine, art & lit, IT, business, etc… In may applications even more focused than that because training models will become more accessible to developers and various sectors of the economy. For example, maybe someone will create an AI realestate agent able to close on home sales and purchases and we can be rid of that lot. ---
**Author:** ![Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swords_to_Plowshares)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2026, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/168 "2026-10-08T14:37:39Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > And the better AI agents get, the more issues they will be able to take care of themselves. Yes, people will lose jobs as phone bank customer service reps. But if the customer experience actually improves, and customers recognize the improvement, the actual value to the customers will be better, nevermind the cost savings to to company. I have implemented various parts of large automated phone tree systems. Some parts were using AI, like call routing and basic data entry (entering your account number, DOB, and so forth). I also worked on tools that customer service reps used to look up information. We generated metrics that showed how often these were successful and how much time they saved human agents. This was for a new government contract project. I don’t think it would have been possible to deliver the contract on-budget without this level of automation. I once interviewed with a company that wanted to have a chatbot on the phone that would assist users with buying insurance, and they wanted to use ChatGPT. I told them that this was a very heavy handed approach (I didn’t even get into “people will call in to your service to speak to their AI girlfriend”). But they were very insistent on using this super-generalized service for a very specific task. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2026, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/169 "2026-10-08T15:02:26Z")
As someone who works in the field, do you see the projections I’m making as realistic? I know it will take a cultural shift to perceive AI agents as actually helpful over a live agent. That, and a generational change. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2026, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/170 "2026-10-08T15:27:24Z")
AI can probably do 90% of the job of most support agents now. It’s the 10% they get stuck on that still requires a human. Then again, it’s not like the job of “phone agent” has a rich history going back hundreds of years. There will probably be a cultural shift because cultures always shift. I feel like the “80s teen work culture” I grew up with is largely a thing of the past. Like when I was in high school, everyone pretty much worked some odd McJob in the various restaurants, diners, fast food, and other retail establishments around town or the nearby towns or in one of the nearby shopping malls. There were always at least a couple of kids I knew from school either at my job or maybe in one of the stores on the same stripmal. Like that was part of growing up culture in the 80s. I imagine 90% of those jobs are already replaced by automated kiosks, [Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com), or allowances from parents who would rather have their kids focusing on resume-building activities. ---
**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, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/171 "2026-10-08T19:21:41Z")
In the near term, I think the “AI civilization of the future” will be cleaning up the mess when the AI bubble collapses, and the term becoming discredited for some years as an enormous amount of money and effort goes into ripping dysfunctional “AI” and its products out of everything. In the longer term, when actual AI becomes possible? The two most likely scenarios IMHO are first, the techbro-desired setup where a handful of people own and control everything, with robots doing everything for them and the rest of us metaphorically shoved off in a corner to die. They seem to want to create in real life Asimov’s [Solaria](https://asimov.fandom.com/wiki/Solaria), a world where a handful of people each controlling thousands of robots and living in isolation from one another were the sole living population. The second and more likely scenario is one where the government takes away their toys and uses the technology to create an invincible dictatorship. One where the enforcement mechanisms are entirely AI, with no potentially disloyal or rebellious humans. A society where people are from birth to death watched every moment by AI for dissent, where since the machines do everything important people have no education beyond how to parrot the desired words of praise for the regime. A dictatorship that runs itself to the point that the dictator could die without heirs and until the Sun eats the Earth, its subjects would still be raised and compelled to do nothing but praise a dead man. > [@msmith537](#): > > I wonder if AI will at some point become a sort of “electronic vermin” such that people might start regressing to “low tech” options for stuff. I see glimpses of that with stories of Gen A wanting old style flip phones instead of smart phones. I suppose what might drive that is AI becoming this uncontrollable noise where you can’t quite trust the output, but yet becomes smart enough to hack into and infiltrate most systems. I’ve seen that idea pop up in more and more sci-fi stories. The idea of a somewhat retro-future where there isn’t an Internet as we know it anymore, because it was so heavily infested with destructive, subversive or just junk programs that it became unusable. ---
**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 8, 2026, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/172 "2026-10-08T19:49:58Z")
Jesus. Have you tried getting up on a different side of the bed? ---
**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 8, 2026, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/173 "2026-10-08T19:56:47Z")
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. I mean, I read _I Have No a Mouth and I Must Scream_ and it was truly one of the most disturbing things I have ever read. I wish I hadn’t read it. A steady diet of that and this all looks really existentially scary. To add, I just don’t buy a future without human agency. I can believe in some bleak outcomes, but the assumption that humans will become too powerless to stop any of this seems farfetched to me. The idea that AI will become so much smarter than us and destroy the world is foundationally a philosophical idea grounded in a fictional genre. It’s at best speculation. We can’t extrapolate that future from current conditions. ---
**Author:** ![Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swords_to_Plowshares)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2026, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/174 "2026-10-08T20:01:07Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I think the more science fiction you read, the more you see AI as a future of dystopian horror. Except we literally have billionaires like Peter Thiel telling us that’s what they want to do. ---
**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, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/175 "2026-10-08T20:03:09Z")
It’s more that the last 20 or so years has convinced me that there’s zero chance that the more optimistic scenarios will ever, under any circumstances be permitted to happen. There’s only a choice of hells, and we aren’t even the ones who will get to choose which one we get shoved into. I used to have a much more hopeful outlook to the future, but not anymore. ---
**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 8, 2026, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/176 "2026-10-08T20:04:59Z")
You did?? I mean this with utter sincerity, from one neurotic person to another: I hope you are getting some kind of help. I would be so incredibly constantly stressed if I held half of your pessimism. And I don’t exactly consider myself an optimist! ---
**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 8, 2026, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/177 "2026-10-08T20:09:02Z")
> [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](#): > > Except we literally have billionaires like Peter Thiel telling us that’s what they want to do. Yeah, and Musk wants to colonize Mars. At some point you just have to accept they’re broken toys who’ve lost touch with reality. ---
**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 8, 2026, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/178 "2026-10-08T20:10:04Z")
> [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](#): > > Except we literally have billionaires like Peter Thiel telling us that’s what they want to do. The thing that does concern me is the growing sense of helplessness in the general population. That could very well get worse. Which is why we’ve got guys like Cory Doctorow out there saying, “Hey, there’s things we can actually do about this, you know.” I think we’ve fundamentally got an empowerment problem. We ended slavery. We defeated Hitler. We can certainly work toward a future of better-regulated AI. I think the political will is only growing right now. ---
**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 8, 2026, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/179 "2026-10-08T20:43:41Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I think we’ve fundamentally got an empowerment problem. I think we’ve fundamentally got a hysteria problem. Over and over I see people in the media with large audiences (ex. Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Anderson Cooper… the list goes on and on) doing stories on AI without the slightest idea of how any of it works or that it doesn’t work as well as the frontier company hype. They scare the bejesus out of their audience and sew panic and anxiety. Jon Stewart had on that fucking child from OpenAI who is doing a media circuit (circus?) about how he suddenly grew a conscience when he discovered how OpenAI was building their AI. His job, from how he described it, was to be the pre-training data analyst. Not the guy who designs the LLM, not the RAG guy, not neural network engineer, not the post-training quality control analyst. He is the guy on the team that collects and “vets” the data the models will be trained on. How, one might ask, does a team of people vet data for training? That would be an interesting thing to ask and have him explain. But does anyone ask him? No. What they ask him is the likelihood that AI will kill us all and when that is likely to happen. It’s a farce and I’m fucking sick and tired of how irresponsible the media has been in helping AI companies terrify everyone so they can swoop in and “save civilization” from the technology they built. ---
**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 8, 2026, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/180 "2026-10-08T21:01:24Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > I think we’ve fundamentally got a hysteria problem. Why not both? If people knew how much power they had maybe they wouldn’t be so hysterical. Yes the media is absolutely complicit. I think it’s interesting JS platformed that OpenAI guy. I recently heard an interview with him and Cory Doctorow which couldn’t have had a more different tone. Maybe even Stewart doesn’t know what he believes right now. There are a lot of people jerking us around. Which is why I’ve personally found it difficult to figure out what’s true. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973.md?page=10)