Til death or the Singularity

Wartime weddings

My post about marriage escaped my little bubble, so I got a lot of confusion and scorn about this throwaway sentence:

Given AI timelines, I think the expected length of your marriage if you get married today is probably something like ten years.

Let me back up and explain.

Within seven or eight years, I think there will probably be millions or billions of AI agents that are each far better than the very best humans at every skill in every field: each one far better than Einstein or von Neumann at physics, far better than Bezos or Musk at running giant companies, far better than the best generals at running a war effort, far better than any human at coming up with brilliant and creative new ideas, running massive ambitious enterprises, adapting to new situations, and learning new skills. This vast population of superhuman AI agents will likely invent new technologies radically faster than humans could on our own, ¹ including developing even more powerful successors. A year or two into this process, the fast-evolving AI civilization will likely develop truly sci-fi technologies like near-light-speed spacecraft or molecular nanotechnology.

This — dizzying acceleration of technological progress driven by ever-more powerful AI — is often called the Singularity. What does the Singularity mean for your life?

Firstly, it could make life very short. AI could make it trivial to develop extremely destructive technologies like mirror bacteria, a small group could monopolize the most capable AI and use it to take over the world, there could be an all-out war between the US and China over control of AI or fought with AI-enabled superweapons, or (as I study in my day job) AI systems themselves could take over the world. I think we live in an era more dangerous than the height of the Cold War. I’m thirty one, and I think there’s a one in six chance that I personally die because of AI before my fortieth birthday.

If it does not kill you, the Singularity would probably make your life much, much longer and much, much stranger. You could have access to technology that lets you completely arrest biological aging, arbitrarily modify your appearance, give yourself new senses and physical abilities, permanently increase your intelligence or alter your personality. You could upload your brain to the cloud, copy yourself millions of times, and surgically edit your own “code.” If you wanted, you could become something far more than human.

Predicting the future is hard. We may not develop superintelligent AI for a long time, or it could prove difficult for even superintelligent AI to develop such technologies, or humans could collectively decide to restrain technological progress to a more manageable pace. But ultimately, if we don’t die, I think we will probably have radical life options within a few years of superintelligence.

What does the Singularity mean for marriage? Some rationalists who expect to live extremely long lives vow to stay together “til the stars burn out.” I think it’s silly, and borderline meaningless, to make a commitment now that is meant to last potentially millions of years of growth. I also think it’s probably not advisable to make a firm commitment to stay together in the face of radical technological options which the institution of marriage wasn’t designed to give guidance about. What if one partner wants to upload themselves and the other doesn’t? How would they handle a decision about whether to fully specify their children’s genomes? What if, with the advice of an infinitely knowledgeable deity, one partner or another can become extremely confident that they would be much better off broken up? What if they could both date AI partners that are supernaturally perfect for them?

If you survive the Singularity, I think you should plan on taking a deep breath and figuring out what your new life should look like. Your marriage vows should probably be until death or the Singularity.² If the Singularity is pretty soon, that means your marriage will be pretty short.

But a shorter marriage can still be an incredibly meaningful one. I expect each passing year to be more intense than the last from now until the end. I feel I am staring at a cresting wave miles high about to break on our shore, and I am grateful to have someone’s hand to hold as I face the tsunami. It feels like getting married before heading off to war.

1. As I mentioned in a post on my other blog, some people believe that AI will only serve as the next innovation that’s needed to keep progress chugging along at its previous pace, rather than slowing down (the “no takeoff” view). This misses the fact that previous technologies never actually removed the human bottleneck entirely.

2. You could go more hardcore than this if you talk through the possibilities in advance. For example, you could agree that you and your partner owe each other one subjective lifespan (e.g. fifty subjective years). This does have significant costs —if one partner wants to upload and the other doesn’t, the more radical partner is giving up a lot to stay as a normal human with the more conservative partner — but it could make sense for you. If you make this commitment, your marriage would be about as long if you live through the Singularity as if there were no Singularity. In expectation, it is still shorter because there’s a significant chance you die in the middle of the Singularity.