Boredom, Humanity and AI
I used to wonder why we give so much importance to a sports or a movie person. I feel the reason is our lives are so boring to live. You are submerged in trivia and mundane. There is nothing exciting in repeating the same thing like going to work or going to class. Sitting through hours and hours of lectures from someone in a class room is the most boring thing ever. Repeatedly going to work everyday and looking at mails and responding and attending meetings can take a toll on the mind.
This is mainly because the world now is a far better place than it was hundred or even fifty years ago. The politics, economy and individuals life situation has improved a lot. There are a lot of things that are within the reach for a large majority of the population. But to keep this going, everyone has to be at their desk doing some smallish thing for the next fifty years. That’s what causes the boredom. A lot of us have earned our living but lost our freedom. We are stuck at the other end of the spectrum.
It is not that these things can be decided by any one of us and we can make overnight changes in our position. We reached here after many battles. Our forefathers died of diseases easily. They fought wars unnecessarily. They lived in penury for most of their lives. Over time, things have drifted into going towards a better living. More money in hands, more goods that money can buy, better healthcare. But all of this comes at a cost that a large number of the population has to be engaged in some long term meaningless activity.
The boredom arising out of doing that has now resulted in humanity moving towards automating them. AI is the new weapon. It may be another fifty years by which time, most of the menial and mundane things would be done by machines that have learnt to do those. The economies and politics will shift towards more stable positions. Demand and supply can be fine tuned better. The bottom of the pyramid will be filled with bots and humans can move up the ladder. More people can write poetry or relax in a park staring at the tree tops. There will be lot more boredom to counter and lot more movies to watch. May be that is the ultimate goal of humanity. Merry making. More free time also will bring in more joy as the mind is free. That’s probably the reason why some of us are working hard on making the AI dream work.
Ultimately we want to be free. But the mind can never be free. Once we climb that mountain we will see more.
