Near Futures
In which Nina discusses her motivations for writing
The last couple years have had a strange dream-like quality to them - things feel like they are moving incredibly fast and simultaneously, not at all.
Sometimes the AI feels incredibly smart and capable and it feels like we are on the cusp of never working again and other times it’s a clown show that fails so catastrophically I leave feeling like I can’t trust the AI to do anything at all. The truth is probably somewhere in between but I can’t shake the feeling that the range of potential near futures has never been wider.
I wanted to write this because I like thinking about these potential near futures and exploring them with others.
I almost named this “Not Too Distant Futures” but GPT helpfully informed me that that phrase implies a bit further out than “Near Futures” and I think near future is a more accurate description of the space I feel excited to explore.
I also see so many not too distant futures - which range from the complete annihilation of humanity by AGI to some techno-utopia where the AI does all the work and we frolic in meadows or whatever humans do when they are freed from the shackles of needing to work to survive.
I know which one I hope we end up in but I’m struggling to draw the linear path from where we are today to that end state and I’m hoping that through this exploration of near futures, people can join me in figuring out how we make sure we forge one of those “happy” path for not too distant futures v. having us end up in one of the significantly more numerous “sad” paths I can think of.
