Manolis Kellis

Human society is extremely complicated.

We have come from a hunter-gatherer society to an agricultural and farming society

where the goal of most professions was to eat and to survive.

And with the advent of agriculture, the ability to live together in societies, humans could suddenly be

valued for different skills.

If you don't know how to hunt, but you're an amazing potterer, then you fit in society very well because you can sort of make your pottery and you can barter it for rabbits that somebody else caught.

And the person who hunts the rabbits doesn't need to make pots because you're making all the pots.

And that specialization of humans is what shaped modern society.

And with the advent of currencies and governments and credit cards and Bitcoin, you basically now have the ability to exchange value for the kind of productivity that you have.

So basically I make things that are desirable to others, I can sell them and buy back food, shelter, et cetera.

With AI, the concept of I am my profession might need to be revised.

because I defined my profession in the first place as something that humanity needed, that I was uniquely capable of delivering.

But the moment we have AI systems able to deliver these goods, for example, writing a piece of software or making a self-driving car or interpreting the human genome, then that frees up more of human time for other pursuits.

this could be pursuits that are still valuable to society.

I could basically be 10 times more productive at interpreting genomes and do a lot more.

Or I could basically say, oh great, the interpreting genomes part of my job now only takes me 5% of the time instead of 60% of the time.

So now I can do more creative things.

I can explore not new career options, but maybe new directions for my research lab.

I can sort of be more productive, contribute more to society.

And if you look at this giant pyramid that we have built on top of the subsistence economy,