During the summer vacation, my 15-year-old eldest son Alex is immersed in a programming project purely out of interest. His goal is to develop an iPhone app for his high school that reminds students of class times. He has some basic knowledge of Python programming, which I taught him in the past. To further enhance his skills, I purchased a membership on poe.com so that he can ask any programming questions to the AI model himself. This has saved me a lot of time. This morning, when I asked about the progress of his project, he said everything was going smoothly and he could consult ChatGPT whenever he had questions.

Future Careers

I told him that this might become the norm for accomplishing many tasks in the future: having an idea, possessing some basic knowledge, and then solving problems along the way through AI (and occasionally consulting humans) to achieve goals. In the future, most people will likely have two main types of careers: scientists and entrepreneurs (or engineers if they work independently).

  1. Scientists: Their primary responsibility is to understand everything and answer the “why” questions. For example, why do people age? How does intelligence arise? By delving into natural laws and scientific principles, they uncover the mysteries of life and the workings of the universe. There are also social science questions, such as why healthcare costs in the United States are so high, or why public school education quality is so poor. Einstein is a quintessential example of a scientist; his E=mc² formula revealed that mass and energy are equivalent and can be converted into each other, fundamentally changing human understanding of the universe. This explains the energy source of stars and laid the theoretical foundation for the utilization of nuclear energy.

  2. Entrepreneurs: Their main responsibility is to produce products or provide services to meet people’s practical needs and solve specific problems. For example, they develop smartphones that enable people to communicate anytime, anywhere; they create logistics networks to ensure the efficient distribution of goods; and they launch telemedicine services to help patients recover health at a low cost and high efficiency. Elon Musk is a prime example. His Tesla has promoted the popularization of electric vehicles and the development of autonomous driving technology. His SpaceX is committed to reducing the cost of space exploration, making the dream of human colonization of Mars no longer distant.

Science and entrepreneurship complement each other and jointly drive social progress. It is highly likely that everyone will integrate both professions, with their businesses continuously researching new problems.

What to Do in the Future?

We then discussed what future scientists and entrepreneurs should specifically do. I personally believe that the essence of intelligent life is the pursuit of freedom in all dimensions. If a goal increases everyone’s freedom (without harming others), it is a good direction. If it restricts human freedom, it is a bad direction.

I gave some specific examples:

  • Time Dimension: The desire for longevity, the ability to travel back to the past, and the ability to see the future.

  • Space Dimension: The ability to quickly and inexpensively reach any desired destination, from Mars to other star systems.

  • Financial Dimension: The aspiration for financial freedom, having enough money to purchase any desired goods and services. However, with future AI-driven robots capable of producing most products and providing various services at a low cost, the importance of money may diminish.

After discussing these examples, I asked Alex to come up with a few examples of freedom he would like to achieve. Initially, he hesitated, so I prompted him to consider his daily schedule and activities to identify areas where he felt restricted and needed greater freedom.

He immediately mentioned sleep: There should be freedom of sleep, such as the ability to sleep whenever one wants and to improve the quality and efficiency of sleep through technology and biology. For example, being able to achieve the effects of a traditional eight-hour sleep in just one hour, or even a few minutes. It’s like charging a phone; initially, it took eight hours, but now it can be fully charged in just a few minutes.

Then he talked about perceptual freedom: Human perceptual abilities should be able to control sensitivity at will and turn on and off as needed. For example, turning off the sense of smell to avoid unpleasant odors. Another example is vision; since vision is essentially the perception of electromagnetic waves, it should extend to the entire spectrum, not just visible light. It should also be able to magnify the field of view, integrating the functions of microscopes and telescopes into the human eye. I added that, yes, miniaturizing large, cumbersome external devices for easy portability is a common development for increasing freedom. The most typical example is the computer, which has evolved from large machines to personal computers, smartphones, and smart glasses, getting closer and closer to humans.

He then talked about food: There should be food freedom. There are many specific ways to achieve this. For example, using 3D printing to produce any desired food. The food production chain can become more efficient, with vegetables and meats being produced quickly. Ultimately, this is actually an energy transfer issue: from plants using solar energy for photosynthesis, to animals, and finally to humans. Why not research the possibility of human skin performing photosynthesis directly, bypassing plants and animals? His idea was really interesting.

The discussion naturally turned to energy freedom. Since food, or any product or service, fundamentally relies on energy, depending on the sun is not optimal, as the sun will eventually run out. The foundation of energy is still nuclear, including nuclear fusion and fission. Due to environmental pollution concerns, nuclear fusion is receiving great attention, with many countries and some high-tech companies investing in the commercialization of nuclear fusion research. In the future, everyone might be able to carry a nuclear energy battery, like today’s nuclear submarines and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, with a single nuclear energy battery satisfying various needs for decades.

Conclusion

By this point, he realized that the possibilities for the future are limitless, and there is so much that can be done. We don’t need to worry about current artificial intelligence. Even with AI assistance, we expect it will still take thousands of years to solve human freedom in a few limited dimensions (such as time, space, perception, energy, food, etc.). Of course, this is assuming that we won’t be destroyed by mad warlords using nuclear weapons.

Translated from my wechat account article: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/50MD42_ster65PQaygRtFw