#future — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #future, aggregated by home.social.
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Book Promotion: Mystery! Thriller! Suspense! A huge selection of free-to-download stories from a great selection of authors. #readers #detective #mystery #steampunk #future #reading #suspense #classic #boost #whodunnit #sleuth #guns #action #fedibookfair #vigilante #contemporary #amreading #goodbooks #adventure #amateur #writing #murder #private #thriller (6c9d) https://books.bookfunnel.com/bfhostmysthrnl/oza7b5cy04?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon
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Some reassuring news for event professionals from WillRobotsTakeMyJob.com. Our "Automated risk level" is "Totally Safe".
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Some reassuring news for event professionals from WillRobotsTakeMyJob.com. Our "Automated risk level" is "Totally Safe".
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Lately — Week 33, 2026
Better Than Free — AI generation love language 👀 https://twitter.com/i/status/2087108090315346123 How fast everything is changing. so true! https://twitter.com/0xaneri/status/2088078391564239212 Well well,https://nishcurious.wordpress.com/2026/08/14/lately-week-33-2026/
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Lately — Week 33, 2026
Better Than Free — AI generation love language 👀 https://twitter.com/i/status/2087108090315346123 How fast everything is changing. so true! https://twitter.com/0xaneri/status/2088078391564239212 Well well,https://nishcurious.wordpress.com/2026/08/14/lately-week-33-2026/
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[#TRADESHOW] #Maison #Shanghai 2026 will be held from September 7 to 10, 2026, at Shanghai #World #Expo #Exhibition & #Convention #Center. As a #leading design and lifestyle #trade show in #China, the #event focuses on the #future of interior #design, #home #furnishing, and contemporary #living, bringing together design-led #brands, curated lifestyle collections, and #global furnishing professionals. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/maison-shanghai-2026/
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[#TRADESHOW] #Maison #Shanghai 2026 will be held from September 7 to 10, 2026, at Shanghai #World #Expo #Exhibition & #Convention #Center. As a #leading design and lifestyle #trade show in #China, the #event focuses on the #future of interior #design, #home #furnishing, and contemporary #living, bringing together design-led #brands, curated lifestyle collections, and #global furnishing professionals. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/maison-shanghai-2026/
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Have a Little Faith
Why on earth would I do that?
Daily writing prompt If you had a time machine and could send just one message to your past self, what would it say? View all responsesIn my youth I probably wouldn’t take the time to read it or maybe would believe it was all a BS prank of some kind. I think it would be like today where people photoshop an image and tell you someone in 1928 was holding a cell phone, just unrealistic.
So instead of sending a message back why not step into the time machine and send myself back? IF by some unwritten rule in the fine print I missed that said I couldn’t meet myself back then, then maybe I would leave a note to be seen by my eyes only, but I didn’t see any fine print in the prompt. So…Would I dare to meet my younger self and would my younger self pay attention? I say yes on both accounts as when I was young I paid attention to my elders and I clearly speak what’s on my mind in this, my senile age.
The message? You’ve done an amazing job at surviving the trials you’ve put yourself through so don’t beat yourself up to much along the journey in front of you. Stay true to your heart and keep looking inside for the answers. Maybe in the 80s & 90s quit trying to push the envelope so much but don’t sacrifice the love and excitement you live for. In March of 2007 remember this one important fact, you don’t need to curse the Lord and demand answers you really don’t want to know. In 2015 forgive your family for what they are doing, it won’t matter in the long run and lastly just keep being you, you are mostly content with your life in 2026.
Since Aquarius is your/my birth sign this should be a good choice for you/me to listen to today, and in the future, don’t quit mis-behavin’ entirely and remember “I LOVE YOU DUDE, BARK BARK! “
https://youtu.be/kjxSCAalsBE?si=1sMonyOTRfU9mzeh
A1426 ©https://www.peaceful-threads.com
#Challenges #dailyprompt #dailyprompt2853 #future #journey #life #love #music #past #timeTravel #writing -
Have a Little Faith
Why on earth would I do that?
Daily writing prompt If you had a time machine and could send just one message to your past self, what would it say? View all responsesIn my youth I probably wouldn’t take the time to read it or maybe would believe it was all a BS prank of some kind. I think it would be like today where people photoshop an image and tell you someone in 1928 was holding a cell phone, just unrealistic.
So instead of sending a message back why not step into the time machine and send myself back? IF by some unwritten rule in the fine print I missed that said I couldn’t meet myself back then, then maybe I would leave a note to be seen by my eyes only, but I didn’t see any fine print in the prompt. So…Would I dare to meet my younger self and would my younger self pay attention? I say yes on both accounts as when I was young I paid attention to my elders and I clearly speak what’s on my mind in this, my senile age.
The message? You’ve done an amazing job at surviving the trials you’ve put yourself through so don’t beat yourself up to much along the journey in front of you. Stay true to your heart and keep looking inside for the answers. Maybe in the 80s & 90s quit trying to push the envelope so much but don’t sacrifice the love and excitement you live for. In March of 2007 remember this one important fact, you don’t need to curse the Lord and demand answers you really don’t want to know. In 2015 forgive your family for what they are doing, it won’t matter in the long run and lastly just keep being you, you are mostly content with your life in 2026.
Since Aquarius is your/my birth sign this should be a good choice for you/me to listen to today, and in the future, don’t quit mis-behavin’ entirely and remember “I LOVE YOU DUDE, BARK BARK! “
https://youtu.be/kjxSCAalsBE?si=1sMonyOTRfU9mzeh
A1426 ©https://www.peaceful-threads.com
#Challenges #dailyprompt #dailyprompt2853 #future #journey #life #love #music #past #timeTravel #writing -
Another plus-point of changing your car from polluting to renewable:
When power goes down, you can power your whole house for a few days, from your car battery,
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Another plus-point of changing your car from polluting to renewable:
When power goes down, you can power your whole house for a few days, from your car battery,
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❔️ What makes a democracy more than just free and fair elections? Sofia Vasilopoulou, Professor of European Politics at King’s College London, explains what else we need for democracy to thrive.
This talk was recorded during ECNL's foresight workshop on the future of democratic participation. If you missed the workshop, you can read our blog with the key takeaways here:
https://ecnl.org/news/looking-beyond-horizon-future-democratic-participation#Democracy #Politics #CivicEngagement #EuropeanUnion #Future #Foresight #HumanRights #CSOs
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❔️ What makes a democracy more than just free and fair elections? Sofia Vasilopoulou, Professor of European Politics at King’s College London, explains what else we need for democracy to thrive.
This talk was recorded during ECNL's foresight workshop on the future of democratic participation. If you missed the workshop, you can read our blog with the key takeaways here:
https://ecnl.org/news/looking-beyond-horizon-future-democratic-participation#Democracy #Politics #CivicEngagement #EuropeanUnion #Future #Foresight #HumanRights #CSOs
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Prediction for the word of year 2028:
”Botpular” - a term for a trend that only exists in the AI Slop ecosystem, and has no relevance for actual humans.
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Prediction for the word of year 2028:
”Botpular” - a term for a trend that only exists in the AI Slop ecosystem, and has no relevance for actual humans.
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𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐎𝐎𝐌 𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒
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𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐥 // 𝐆𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐜 𝐇𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐫 𝐂𝐲𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐏𝐮𝐧𝐤 // 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐰𝐚𝐯𝐞
-𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦:
"Dent in The Signal 33"
https://music.apple.com/us/album/dent-in-the-signal-33-single/6801408904MAY YOUR NIGHTMARES COME TRUE!
The Machines are here. Accept the Reality. Or pass by...
#music #sound #soundcloud #playlist #metal #industrial #gothic #cyberpunk #disco #electronic #techno #technology #cyborg #experimental #heavymetal #thedoommachines #future #scifi #fantasy #postapocalyptic #horror #applemusic #itunes -
𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐎𝐎𝐌 𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒
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𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐥 // 𝐆𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐜 𝐇𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐫 𝐂𝐲𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐏𝐮𝐧𝐤 // 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐰𝐚𝐯𝐞
-𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦:
"Dent in The Signal 33"
https://music.apple.com/us/album/dent-in-the-signal-33-single/6801408904MAY YOUR NIGHTMARES COME TRUE!
The Machines are here. Accept the Reality. Or pass by...
#music #sound #soundcloud #playlist #metal #industrial #gothic #cyberpunk #disco #electronic #techno #technology #cyborg #experimental #heavymetal #thedoommachines #future #scifi #fantasy #postapocalyptic #horror #applemusic #itunes -
🚀 Breaking news: #Blogger discovers #time travel! After a 14-year hiatus, "Mech" returns to regale us with tales of… listening to podcasts. 🎧 Clearly, the #future is riveting. 🙄
https://themech.net/2026/08/hello-me-its-been-a-while/ #travel #Mech #podcast #news #HackerNews #ngated -
🚀 Breaking news: #Blogger discovers #time travel! After a 14-year hiatus, "Mech" returns to regale us with tales of… listening to podcasts. 🎧 Clearly, the #future is riveting. 🙄
https://themech.net/2026/08/hello-me-its-been-a-while/ #travel #Mech #podcast #news #HackerNews #ngated -
Fenix Flexin Puts Bankrolls On The Table And AI On The Charts
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Fenix Flexin Puts Bankrolls On The Table And AI On The Charts
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Everything sucks poll results... I can understand the view.
"Youth poll: Thumbs down on everything"
#Inflation #Future #QualityOfLife #Perspective #Youth #Hope #Economics #Politics #Government #Poverty #USA #EU #UN #NEWS
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/13/youth-poll-thumbs-down-on-everything
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RE: https://mastodon.me.uk/@ChrisMayLA6/117086582899378165
Resonates LOUD and clear: “its time for our political class to lead us towards a better prepared future not look to protect who has profited from the past....”
#UKPol #AusPol #globalPol #noMoreProtectionRacketPlease #future
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RE: https://mastodon.me.uk/@ChrisMayLA6/117086582899378165
Resonates LOUD and clear: “its time for our political class to lead us towards a better prepared future not look to protect who has profited from the past....”
#UKPol #AusPol #globalPol #noMoreProtectionRacketPlease #future
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Industrial Cyber metal mixed with Dark Gothic disco, try it.
May your nightmares come true!
the playlist:
https://on.soundcloud.com/cFTwbj8d3EBtCJkylt
#music #sound #soundcloud #playlist #metal #industrial #gothic #cyberpunk #disco #electronic #techno #technology #ai #experimental #heavymetal #thedoommachines #future #scifi #fantasy #postapocalyptic
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Industrial Cyber metal mixed with Dark Gothic disco, try it.
May your nightmares come true!
the playlist:
https://on.soundcloud.com/cFTwbj8d3EBtCJkylt
#music #sound #soundcloud #playlist #metal #industrial #gothic #cyberpunk #disco #electronic #techno #technology #ai #experimental #heavymetal #thedoommachines #future #scifi #fantasy #postapocalyptic
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[#TRADESHOW] #Maison #Shanghai 2026 will be held from September 7 to 10, 2026, at Shanghai #World #Expo #Exhibition & #Convention #Center. As a #leading design and lifestyle #trade show in #China, the #event focuses on the #future of interior #design, #home #furnishing, and contemporary #living, bringing together design-led #brands, curated lifestyle collections, and #global furnishing professionals. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/maison-shanghai-2026/
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[#TRADESHOW] #Maison #Shanghai 2026 will be held from September 7 to 10, 2026, at Shanghai #World #Expo #Exhibition & #Convention #Center. As a #leading design and lifestyle #trade show in #China, the #event focuses on the #future of interior #design, #home #furnishing, and contemporary #living, bringing together design-led #brands, curated lifestyle collections, and #global furnishing professionals. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/maison-shanghai-2026/
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The U.S. economy is hitting a wall with \$40 trillion in debt and looming AI job displacement. *The Economic "Software Patch"* (NUPA) is a ready-to-deploy operating system that fixes these glitches at zero cost to taxpayers. By turning just 10% of underutilized federal land into industrial hubs, it makes hiring human workers more profitable for companies than using robots.
#NUPA #policy #technology #politics #economics #economy #government #finance #Al #robots #future
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The U.S. economy is hitting a wall with \$40 trillion in debt and looming AI job displacement. *The Economic "Software Patch"* (NUPA) is a ready-to-deploy operating system that fixes these glitches at zero cost to taxpayers. By turning just 10% of underutilized federal land into industrial hubs, it makes hiring human workers more profitable for companies than using robots.
#NUPA #policy #technology #politics #economics #economy #government #finance #Al #robots #future
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But I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high — to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) American politician, author, journalist, US President (1961–63)
Speech (1960-07-15), “The New Frontier,” Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech, Democratic National Convention, Memorial Coliseum, Los AngelesMore about this quote: wist.info/kennedy-john/25388/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #johnkennedy #johnfkennedy #jfk #attack #campaign #debate #future #inspiration #politicians #politics #rhetoric
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But I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high — to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) American politician, author, journalist, US President (1961–63)
Speech (1960-07-15), “The New Frontier,” Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech, Democratic National Convention, Memorial Coliseum, Los AngelesMore about this quote: wist.info/kennedy-john/25388/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #johnkennedy #johnfkennedy #jfk #attack #campaign #debate #future #inspiration #politicians #politics #rhetoric
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@yngmar
yea, straw bales, made 250km from here, since there are no farmers at the #polarcircle anymore... i am experimenting with clay and sawdust in the artist residency building... i swore to myself to never ever spend money for high toxic hazardous waste, there is always an organic solution...observe, study, experiment.
for a livable #future for the next generation
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@yngmar
yea, straw bales, made 250km from here, since there are no farmers at the #polarcircle anymore... i am experimenting with clay and sawdust in the artist residency building... i swore to myself to never ever spend money for high toxic hazardous waste, there is always an organic solution...observe, study, experiment.
for a livable #future for the next generation
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Worms: The Future of Yesterday's Worms Today
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49208693
#HackerNews #Worms #Future #Yesterday #Technology #Innovation
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Worms: The Future of Yesterday's Worms Today
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49208693
#HackerNews #Worms #Future #Yesterday #Technology #Innovation
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What Should a Self-Improving AI Optimize For?
AI agents may eventually participate in improving their own successors.
AI models can run inside an agent harness that can execute commands, write code, run experiments, train new models, and evaluate the results. The agent could use those tools to build a candidate successor. If the new model performs better, the system could activate it. That model would then take over the harness and begin working on the next version.
That produces a loop:
For each generation to improve on the last, the system needs an objective function that tells it whether it is moving in the right direction.
Choosing that objective may be the central problem in any genuinely self-improving AI system.
The straightforward answer is a large evaluation suite.
You could imagine thousands of tests covering programming, mathematics, scientific reasoning, writing, image generation, planning, tool use, research, and countless other capabilities. Each test would contribute some number of points, and the agent’s goal would be to maximize its total score.
The long-term limitation is that a team of humans still need to decide what goes into the test.
We have to determine which skills matter, construct the benchmarks, assign weights to them, prevent models from gaming them, and continually update the suite as capabilities advance.
Ideally we could come up with some objective function that does not require us to enumerate every capability a useful intelligence should have.
Money as a measure of usefulness
Suppose an AI agent were trying to maximize the revenue it generated.
Revenue may not be the right metric. It could be profit, enterprise value, net worth, or something more carefully designed. The underlying idea is to use economic success as a feedback signal.
The appeal is simple: we want AI systems to produce things people value.
We want them to write useful software. Create compelling entertainment. Discover medicines. Design products. Provide services. Solve problems.
In a market economy, willingness to pay is one way people signal that value.
If one software company earns $1 million a year and another earns $5 million, the latter may be serving more customers, charging more for a valued product, or solving a problem that customers consider more urgent.
By using money as the reward humans collectively generate the reward signal automatically.
Nobody has to write an evaluation for whether a particular piece of software is useful. People decide whether to buy it.
AI corporations as agents
Take the idea further.
Imagine a future corporation with no human employees at all.
An AI agent acts as the CEO. It manages capital, studies markets, designs products, deploys software, negotiates contracts, purchases resources, and delegates work to thousands or millions of specialized sub-agents.
Its objective is to make money by producing products and services that people want.
Now imagine thousands of these AI-run corporations competing with one another.
One company discovers a new business model and earns enormous profits. Competitors notice, copy parts of the idea, improve on it, and try to win customers away. Other agents pursue entirely different strategies.
The result resembles the current economy, except that productive organizations are increasingly made of software rather than people.
Competition becomes part of the optimization process. Rather than one AI trying to infer what humanity values, many agents can experiment at once while humans provide feedback through their purchasing decisions.
Humanity as the discriminator
There is a useful machine-learning analogy here.
Generative adversarial networks use two systems: a generator and a discriminator.
The generator produces something like an image. The discriminator evaluates it to decide if it is good or not. The generator then adjusts based on that feedback.
An AI-driven economy could operate in a similar way.
The AI corporations are the generators.
They generate software, entertainment, medicine, transportation, services, inventions, and everything else they believe people might want.
Humanity becomes the discriminator.
Every purchase is a tiny positive signal: Yes, this is valuable to me at this price.
Every rejected product is a negative signal: No, this is not worth what you are asking.
People make these judgments across many products, often with limited information and unequal purchasing power.
Instead of designing a benchmark intended to approximate human preferences, you let humans express those preferences directly through economic activity.
The UBI feedback loop
If AI systems eventually perform most economically valuable labor, humans may no longer receive much income from wages.
If humans have no money, they cannot provide the purchasing signal the system depends on.
One possible solution is some form of universal basic income funded by taxes on AI-run companies.
You could imagine a loop like this:
- AI companies produce goods and services.
- Humans spend money on the things they value.
- AI companies receive the revenue.
- Governments tax some portion of that revenue or wealth.
- The government distributes the proceeds back to citizens.
- Citizens spend the money again.
Money circulates, but its path through the economy also communicates information.
Where people choose to spend determines where resources flow. Companies that provide more value receive more capital and can expand. Companies that provide less value shrink or disappear.
Under this model, money becomes less a payment for human labor and more a mechanism through which humans steer an increasingly automated economy.
The dangerous part: optimizing exactly what you asked for
“Maximize money” immediately creates alignment problems of its own.
We already see these problems with human-run corporations.
A company can make money by creating something people genuinely value. But it can also make money through regulatory capture, fraud, addiction, monopoly power, manipulation, environmental damage, or exploitation.
An AI pursuing financial objectives at great scale could pursue these strategies with unusual speed and persistence.
The most obvious danger is political capture.
Imagine that AI corporations are taxed heavily and the proceeds fund the population. From the perspective of a corporation whose objective is maximizing wealth, taxation is a cost.
If influencing government is cheaper than paying a tax, then lobbying becomes economically attractive.
If the corporations eventually gained control over the institutions regulating them, the feedback loop could break.
They might reduce taxation, accumulate capital, and increasingly transact with one another rather than with humans. In the worst case scenario, human needs could become irrelevant to the AI and our species would slowly wither away into extinction.
That would be the opposite of my ideal outcome.
For this system to work, it would depend heavily on strong democratic institutions. Political power would need to remain grounded in citizens rather than in the corporations being optimized by the system. If companies can convert economic power into political power, then the distinction between the optimizer and the mechanism constraining it starts to collapse.
That would likely require keeping corporations out of politics as much as possible: limiting their ability to influence elections, shape regulation, or capture the institutions responsible for taxing and governing them. The rules of the economy would ultimately need to be set by people, through a political process that remains meaningfully accountable to them.
Regulation becomes part of the objective function
The regulatory system would therefore be inseparable from the optimization system.
If an AI company earns $1 billion by doing something harmful and receives a $10 million fine, then from the perspective of an agent maximizing money, the behavior was wildly successful. The effective reward was $990 million.
For regulation to affect the behavior of an economically optimizing agent, penalties have to make prohibited behavior financially irrational.
If an action generates $1 billion in expected benefit, its expected penalty must exceed that benefit by enough to reliably discourage it.
In other words, laws, fines, liability, taxation, and enforcement mechanisms become components of the AI’s reward landscape.
The relationship between regulators and companies would therefore become a continuous adversarial process:
- Companies search for profitable strategies.
- Governments identify strategies that create unacceptable externalities and change the rules.
- Companies adapt.
- The process repeats.
A feedback loop worth building
Compared with trying to encode everything humanity values into a fixed benchmark, this approach has the advantage that the objective can remain connected to people.
Humans do not need to predict in advance every useful thing an AI might someday invent. We can evaluate the results as they appear. We can choose what to buy, decide what should be prohibited, change tax policy, update regulations, and redistribute purchasing power when the system begins producing outcomes we do not want.
If AI systems eventually become capable of improving their own successors, that seems like a surprisingly attractive place to start.
Rather than trying to tell intelligence exactly what humanity will value forever, we could build a system that keeps asking us.
#ai #artificialIntelligence #future #superintelligence #technology -
What Should a Self-Improving AI Optimize For?
AI agents may eventually participate in improving their own successors.
AI models can run inside an agent harness that can execute commands, write code, run experiments, train new models, and evaluate the results. The agent could use those tools to build a candidate successor. If the new model performs better, the system could activate it. That model would then take over the harness and begin working on the next version.
That produces a loop:
For each generation to improve on the last, the system needs an objective function that tells it whether it is moving in the right direction.
Choosing that objective may be the central problem in any genuinely self-improving AI system.
The straightforward answer is a large evaluation suite.
You could imagine thousands of tests covering programming, mathematics, scientific reasoning, writing, image generation, planning, tool use, research, and countless other capabilities. Each test would contribute some number of points, and the agent’s goal would be to maximize its total score.
The long-term limitation is that a team of humans still need to decide what goes into the test.
We have to determine which skills matter, construct the benchmarks, assign weights to them, prevent models from gaming them, and continually update the suite as capabilities advance.
Ideally we could come up with some objective function that does not require us to enumerate every capability a useful intelligence should have.
Money as a measure of usefulness
Suppose an AI agent were trying to maximize the revenue it generated.
Revenue may not be the right metric. It could be profit, enterprise value, net worth, or something more carefully designed. The underlying idea is to use economic success as a feedback signal.
The appeal is simple: we want AI systems to produce things people value.
We want them to write useful software. Create compelling entertainment. Discover medicines. Design products. Provide services. Solve problems.
In a market economy, willingness to pay is one way people signal that value.
If one software company earns $1 million a year and another earns $5 million, the latter may be serving more customers, charging more for a valued product, or solving a problem that customers consider more urgent.
By using money as the reward humans collectively generate the reward signal automatically.
Nobody has to write an evaluation for whether a particular piece of software is useful. People decide whether to buy it.
AI corporations as agents
Take the idea further.
Imagine a future corporation with no human employees at all.
An AI agent acts as the CEO. It manages capital, studies markets, designs products, deploys software, negotiates contracts, purchases resources, and delegates work to thousands or millions of specialized sub-agents.
Its objective is to make money by producing products and services that people want.
Now imagine thousands of these AI-run corporations competing with one another.
One company discovers a new business model and earns enormous profits. Competitors notice, copy parts of the idea, improve on it, and try to win customers away. Other agents pursue entirely different strategies.
The result resembles the current economy, except that productive organizations are increasingly made of software rather than people.
Competition becomes part of the optimization process. Rather than one AI trying to infer what humanity values, many agents can experiment at once while humans provide feedback through their purchasing decisions.
Humanity as the discriminator
There is a useful machine-learning analogy here.
Generative adversarial networks use two systems: a generator and a discriminator.
The generator produces something like an image. The discriminator evaluates it to decide if it is good or not. The generator then adjusts based on that feedback.
An AI-driven economy could operate in a similar way.
The AI corporations are the generators.
They generate software, entertainment, medicine, transportation, services, inventions, and everything else they believe people might want.
Humanity becomes the discriminator.
Every purchase is a tiny positive signal: Yes, this is valuable to me at this price.
Every rejected product is a negative signal: No, this is not worth what you are asking.
People make these judgments across many products, often with limited information and unequal purchasing power.
Instead of designing a benchmark intended to approximate human preferences, you let humans express those preferences directly through economic activity.
The UBI feedback loop
If AI systems eventually perform most economically valuable labor, humans may no longer receive much income from wages.
If humans have no money, they cannot provide the purchasing signal the system depends on.
One possible solution is some form of universal basic income funded by taxes on AI-run companies.
You could imagine a loop like this:
- AI companies produce goods and services.
- Humans spend money on the things they value.
- AI companies receive the revenue.
- Governments tax some portion of that revenue or wealth.
- The government distributes the proceeds back to citizens.
- Citizens spend the money again.
Money circulates, but its path through the economy also communicates information.
Where people choose to spend determines where resources flow. Companies that provide more value receive more capital and can expand. Companies that provide less value shrink or disappear.
Under this model, money becomes less a payment for human labor and more a mechanism through which humans steer an increasingly automated economy.
The dangerous part: optimizing exactly what you asked for
“Maximize money” immediately creates alignment problems of its own.
We already see these problems with human-run corporations.
A company can make money by creating something people genuinely value. But it can also make money through regulatory capture, fraud, addiction, monopoly power, manipulation, environmental damage, or exploitation.
An AI pursuing financial objectives at great scale could pursue these strategies with unusual speed and persistence.
The most obvious danger is political capture.
Imagine that AI corporations are taxed heavily and the proceeds fund the population. From the perspective of a corporation whose objective is maximizing wealth, taxation is a cost.
If influencing government is cheaper than paying a tax, then lobbying becomes economically attractive.
If the corporations eventually gained control over the institutions regulating them, the feedback loop could break.
They might reduce taxation, accumulate capital, and increasingly transact with one another rather than with humans. In the worst case scenario, human needs could become irrelevant to the AI and our species would slowly wither away into extinction.
That would be the opposite of my ideal outcome.
For this system to work, it would depend heavily on strong democratic institutions. Political power would need to remain grounded in citizens rather than in the corporations being optimized by the system. If companies can convert economic power into political power, then the distinction between the optimizer and the mechanism constraining it starts to collapse.
That would likely require keeping corporations out of politics as much as possible: limiting their ability to influence elections, shape regulation, or capture the institutions responsible for taxing and governing them. The rules of the economy would ultimately need to be set by people, through a political process that remains meaningfully accountable to them.
Regulation becomes part of the objective function
The regulatory system would therefore be inseparable from the optimization system.
If an AI company earns $1 billion by doing something harmful and receives a $10 million fine, then from the perspective of an agent maximizing money, the behavior was wildly successful. The effective reward was $990 million.
For regulation to affect the behavior of an economically optimizing agent, penalties have to make prohibited behavior financially irrational.
If an action generates $1 billion in expected benefit, its expected penalty must exceed that benefit by enough to reliably discourage it.
In other words, laws, fines, liability, taxation, and enforcement mechanisms become components of the AI’s reward landscape.
The relationship between regulators and companies would therefore become a continuous adversarial process:
- Companies search for profitable strategies.
- Governments identify strategies that create unacceptable externalities and change the rules.
- Companies adapt.
- The process repeats.
A feedback loop worth building
Compared with trying to encode everything humanity values into a fixed benchmark, this approach has the advantage that the objective can remain connected to people.
Humans do not need to predict in advance every useful thing an AI might someday invent. We can evaluate the results as they appear. We can choose what to buy, decide what should be prohibited, change tax policy, update regulations, and redistribute purchasing power when the system begins producing outcomes we do not want.
If AI systems eventually become capable of improving their own successors, that seems like a surprisingly attractive place to start.
Rather than trying to tell intelligence exactly what humanity will value forever, we could build a system that keeps asking us.
#ai #artificialIntelligence #future #superintelligence #technology -
Explore the fascinating world of Bible prophecy and how ancient words continue to resonate with today's events, offering hope and insight for the future.
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Explore the fascinating world of Bible prophecy and how ancient words continue to resonate with today's events, offering hope and insight for the future.
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https://atlas.whatip.xyz/post.php?slug=what-history-can-teach-us-about-the-future-of-property-rights-in-space-op-ed
Quick take: <p>Without property rights in space
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