The mistake we made was to think that tasks such as understanding natural language were difficult. It turns out they are not. (Every moron uses language, that should have been a clue.) Also there is the Dunning-Krüger effect: we are more aware of what we know than what we are ignorant of, so people use to think that it is only a small step between the writing skills of a middling college graduate and Hemmingway--it isn't.
What I mean to say is that it was easy to get AI writing at the level of a decent college graduate, it is almost impossible to to get it to Hemingway levels. Everybody in the industry knows it, and we have largely even stopped trying. So in the future writing will be like maths is today, 99% outsource it too machines, but there is still a small group of enthusiasts and professionals who are just way better then machines.
This also goes for stealing jobs. For a long times machines have been taking jobs that humans are not too keen on. I mean which self-respecting artist would want to make stuff to make my powerpoint presentations prettier? So AI does that now. At the same time I regularly commission art from human artists for work when it matters and that will stay this way.
On the positive side I think we will get are headed for a new creative age. When I was 12 I wanted to make a roleplaying game. I had decent programming skills but the project never got anywhere because I could not make any graphics and sound. If I were 12 today, that would not be a hindrance. In a similar vain I have started to use a combination of painting in photoshop and AI to make illustrations for Rainbow-1 and I am very happy with the results.
These are the things I am really worried about:
- Slaughterbots -- Best illustrated in this video. The problem might not be that AI is trying to kill us but that it gives us new weapons with which we kill each other.
- Americanization -- This might be an odd one, especially if you are American, but AI could lead to a cultural uniformization. If all our visuals are generated with a few AI tools, we may be loosing significant diversity. Moreover, this comes with censorship to a particular set of moral standards.
- Conspiracies -- Historically it has been an important safeguard in our society that you needed people to get things done. If you are running a criminal organization, a dictatorship, or something of this sort you needed to rely on many people. Depending on who you are you might have lawyers, bodyguards, bankers, office stuff, etc, who could spill the beans or take direct action in another way. What if all of these jobs are now down by AI?