You Likely Won’t Live as Long as You Expect

Or, Why the Normal Future Is the Least Likely

What will the world look like ten years after GPT-4?

The first answer is that it’s hard to tell, harder than ever. Predicting the future has become increasingly difficult, as the range of possible outcomes has expanded significantly. Take life expectancy as a basic example. Will it be higher or lower in a decade?

First, it's important to clarify that life expectancy (LE) is not a single figure but rather a probability distribution, shaped like a somewhat skewed bell curve with some interesting properties:

More accurately, it's a multi-dimensional probabilistic object responsive to personal factors such as health, habits, and geography. However, for simplicity, the above 2D chart can demonstrate how AI is shifting probabilities across the spectrum, allowing us to easily formulate the second answer: we may reasonably expect the bell curve to shift a bit to the right.

Advancements in medicine, lifestyle, and global wealth have been responsible for a steady increase in life expectancy in most countries and there's no apparent reason for these trends to halt in the next decade.

Finally, the third answer considers the extremes.

On one side, there's a growing debate around the possibility of AI leading to human extinction within the next ten years. This concept has evolved from a marginal theory to mainstream headlines.

Prediction markets have slightly increased the odds of human extinction before 2100 to about 2%, a figure that has risen over recent years.

An extinction event would obviously reduce most people's life expectancy to zero, pushing the lower end of the bell curve upwards.

Conversely, AI also enhances the likelihood of achieving immortality, or at least reaching the "escape velocity" needed to continually extend lifespan as new medical breakthroughs occur.

Escape velocity is currently predicted for 2062, and steadily decreasing. It might well end up in the 2030s.

The race toward longevity is raising the upper end of the life expectancy curve:

The increasing probability of these extreme scenarios - human extinction and immortality - pressures the bell curve's peak, possibly leading to an inverted bell curve shape. This inversion reflects the growing likelihood of extreme outcomes over more moderate ones.

And while the bell curves may be merely flattened in the near term, the inverted bell curve is a model that expresses many of the tensions today:

Will humanity become extinct or achieve immortality? - inverted bell curve.

Will AI take away all jobs or render work obsolete? - inverted bell curve.

Will it lead to free energy or environmental doom? - inverted bell curve.

Can AI resolve the climate crisis, or is the planet condemned? - inverted bell curve.

Will it bring about world peace or World War III? - inverted bell curve.

While predicting future outcomes is indeed more challenging than ever, this model remains valuable for contemplating what lies ahead. It tells us that in this extraordinary time, the normal future becomes the least likely.

Or, to put it in life expectancy terms: You likely won’t live as long as you expect. Welcome to both corners of the curve.