Susan's Scoop

10 Years Left

Last week we found out that AI may very well destroy all of humanity within a decade.

This admittedly is not great news, but I figured if I have to spend all of my money down in the next 10 years, I’d better figure out a plan. I promptly ordered some new patio furniture, test drove some fun little Mini Coopers, and researched the cost of private jets (which sadly turns out are still too expensive for my budget, even with the 10-year time horizon).

My family thought I was going a little bit overboard, but I think a lot of times we go just as much overboard the other way – pinching every penny in our prime healthy years and working hard for decades only to die with millions of dollars left that we never got to use.

Thinking this could be an interesting thought experiment – having to spend all of your money down in the next 10 years with no need for a legacy, inheritance, or philanthropy – I asked around to see what other people would do:

“I’d stop working entirely, pull my kids out of school, and devote my days to reading, recreating outside, cooking exotic and experimental recipes, and participating in social gatherings in my town. Oh, and I’d eat whatever I damn well please, with a heavy emphasis on baked goods, breakfast pastries, and lots of coffee.”

“I’d move to a nice cottage in a small, walkable town. I’ve already spent too much of my life sitting in traffic.”

“I’d burn my rental properties down so I don’t have to deal with maintenance or horrible tenants anymore. No one gets injured, of course. I do not want to spend these last years of my life dealing with roaches and clogged toilets.”

“Nice house. Yacht. Michelin restaurants. First-class everything. I would like to experience what it feels like to be one of the people I currently hate on TikTok.”

“I’d hire the best music producer I can find and finally record an album of original rock tunes.”

Is there actually a decent chance that AI will kill us all in the next decade? I don’t know. In high school my favorite book was “A Canticle for Leibowitz” (a post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel that explores humanity rebuilding itself from the nuclear ashes, and then eventually destroying itself again), but I didn’t think that I might actually get to live that story.

AI is definitely getting more “human-like” though; back when ChatGPT first came out I would ask it to inject some humor into something, and it would try to add some weird metaphor that made no sense.

Yet the other day I was asking it about zippy little Mini Coopers while complaining that my Volvo only has a “sluggish mom” mode, and out of nowhere it responded, “Okay, “sluggish mom mode” is clearly the official name for whatever Volvo gave you. 😂”

So even the free version of ChatGPT has an eerily human-like sense of humor now, which is a little scary!

But I also am suspicious about these new AI revelations coming so close to the midterm elections. Large tech companies actually often WANT regulations implemented, because it helps to weed out the smaller firms who can’t afford all the compliance requirements. (We certainly saw this with social media). And right now there are multiple AI regulations circulating in Congress, the most prominent of which being the AI Kill Switch Act, which is generally supported by the large AI companies.

With uncertainty around the midterms, NOW seems like a pretty good time to raise concerns about the future safety of AI while Republicans still control the House and Senate so the regulations can be passed, new regulatory barriers can be put in place to hinder smaller competitors, and OpenAI and Anthropic can ride off into the sunset as the big AI winners.

So as with many things, I suspect this “AI fear-mongering” may come back to money and capitalism. But it’s still fun to do a little dreaming every now and then about blowing all of our money to have a phenomenally fun last decade of humanity.

What I'm Reading

💻 How Death Shapes What We Buy – Psychology Today

Since we're apparently contemplating the end of humanity this week, I found this fascinating look at how thinking about our own mortality affects the way we save, spend, and invest. Apparently, even contemplating death doesn't necessarily make us want to blow all our money.

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