AI Armageddon is coming

Artificial intelligence will replace most jobs and create few. The future is bleak - except for the rich

- Benjamin Smart

For the past few months, I've been experimenting with OpenAI's ChatGPT 3 and 4.5 advanced reasoning models.

The difference between these models and ChatGPT 3 is astounding. Grok 4, despite its infamous “MechaNazi” moments, is utterly incredible. With the right prompts, AI can do your taxes, respond to your emails, increase the efficiency of academic research and create deepfakes so realistic they're almost indistinguishable from reality (and soon will be). They are imperfect. ChatGPT remains a terrible philosopher when left to its own devices, but this is just the beginning.

As AI models learn to train and improve themselves, the improvements will become exponential. AI super-intelligence is just around the corner — intelligence that far surpasses the capabilities of human beings. This is not science fiction. It's real, and it's now. Al models will go from what we have now to having capacities we can only imagine, over just a period of months.

AI will probably become a better, faster, cheaper architect than any human. It will render administrators, assistants, paralegals, data inputters, most programmers, most chemists, physicists and actuaries redundant. It will create artworks, novels and music in minutes. There will be AI teachers that can interact with students in a deeply personalised way. There's a good chance they'll be just as effective as real teachers. They'll make no mistakes, and everyone gets one-on-one tuition at a fraction of the cost. Most research and development will be outsourced to the far more capable Als.

This might have some benefits.

Energy prices could tend to zero as AI discovers increasingly efficient means of energy production. Al in healthcare will enable us to predict pathologies years in advance, provide flawless diagnoses and personalised treatment plans, and help develop gene editing and other new forms of treatment.