The monotony of days shatters under the weight of AI. Every door, window, vent, and gate of opportunity is blown open by the intelligent token predictors we call LLMs. You can learn anything and become anyone just by chatting with your agent of choice.
This form of cheap information access didn’t exist until five years ago, and the models themselves have never been smarter than they are today. The question we should all be asking is “What does the world become when powerful intelligence is so broadly and effectively democratized?”. The answer is not obvious, but it leans towards the exhilerating. Every day with access to patient, powerful intelligence is replete with potential. What will you learn? What will you create?
I won’t over-iterate the point, but I will highlight the energy provided by LLMs has never existed in human history. Not electrical energy, motivational energy. For hundreds of thousands of years, a human was human, alone except for their family in a cold and cruel world. The world you knew was the only world there was. But now, there are worlds beyond measure, every thought a fractal with infinite explorability. LLMs and the fast-approaching superintelligences will change what it means to be human by amplifying every experience we’re capable of having. Being born a human was already like winning the lottery. Being born into a world with superintelligence will be something far more rewarding.
More opportunities. Grander potentials. Fewer hardships. Earth becomes heaven. Why would you want to leave a place that has everything you could possibly want? What if the experience we are having is heaven? What if a human life with superintelligence is the ideal experience?
For starters, no one would want to leave it. The exuburance and intrigue of life on Earth would triumph over the uncertainty and bleakness of death somewhere else. Not just life on Earth, either. Life. Life here and anywhere we can think of traveling to. Within this century, I predict religion will crumble rapidly and be utterly replaced with the will to live. Not in 1000 years. 100. The calculus will be simple and evocative. Live forever in a self-improving reality or die. Pursue infinite discovery or stop, forever.
Immortality has not been a plausible notion for the whole of human history. The technology, science, and understanding simply didn’t exist. The emergence of superintelligence brings us the closest we’ve ever been. The nanosecond immortality becomes a possibility, the world will undergo a metamorphosis unlike anything imaginable as everyone grapples with the idea that death means losing the only gift the universe can bestow.