Some singularitarians and transhumanists seem to have an almost childlike naivete about economic growth. No matter how fast AI develops technology, if politicians and government bureaucrats place enough roadblocks in the way of new technology, it won't be able to solve the problems it's supposed to solve.
For example, in the UK, the planning system has made it almost impossible to build new onshore wind turbines and solar farms, and has even made it more difficult to build new offshore wind turbines:
So at a certain point, politics becomes the limiting factor, not technology. In the UK, it won't matter how good wind turbine technology gets, if NIMBYs can still block most wind turbines from ever being erected. In California, it won't matter how good prefabricated home technology gets and how good house-building robots get, if NIMBYs can still block most new housing from ever being constructed.
In the next 10 years, will AIs or their owners/users figure out that politics is in many cases the biggest bottleneck, and devote some serious AI firepower to helping solve political issues standing in the way of progress on the big issues of our time, like climate change? And will an AI then succeed in helping to solve at least one political issue, and play a pivotal role in doing so, in the next 10 years?
This could be in any number of ways, e.g.:
through coming up with better institutional arrangements, that are better able to balance the interests of e.g. powerful NIMBYs and everyone else, and which are then adopted
through producing, or helping to produce, particularly persuasive lobbying material (directed at politicians) or campaign ads (directed at voters)
through producing, or helping to produce, awareness-raising ads or articles, which lead to grassroots efforts to finally solve the bottleneck
through making large amounts of money on the stock or crypto markets, or by creating an ordinary business (maybe paperclip manufacturing?), which is then spent - by the AI's owners, or by humans acting as agents of the AI[*] - on political donations to move the needle politically and get a necessary bill passed
The AI does not have to solve the issue by itself, and it does not have to be 100% solved, but by 2033 the issue has to be a good way towards being solved to qualify.
[*] I am not suggesting it would be a good idea to allow an AI to buy political influence using human meat puppets. In fact, I think it would be a terrible idea. I'm just speculating on a hypothetical means by which an AI could achieve political goals, in theory.
1,000
3.00Hmm, so if LLMs are being widely used to write people's emails and other correspondence, and then "an important political issue" gets solved, this resolves YES?
The title says "a pivotal role" but bullet points 2 and 3 basically amount to "helping to write stuff". I expect everybody's going to be using LLMs to help write stuff in a few years, and therefore the people solving a political issue will have used LLMs to help them do it. But I feel like the spirit of the question would be NO in that case, even if the letter is YES.