I told myself this could happen. And I knew it wouldn’t happen the way I thought. Maybe that’s why, despite the changes, nothing has changed. Yet. I may have mentioned that I was watching particular trends. I watch trends; but for 2023, I was particularly curious about climate change, artificial intelligence, and something rare for me, politics. Oh yeah, and how they would affect my personal finances. It hasn’t been boring, and the situations are changing rapidly.

As I type this, the date is December 8, 2023. A lot can happen between 8 and 31. That can be good and bad. So, why write now? Today, two news items were part of my feed, both relating to Artificial Intelligence (AI).

A startlingly inaccurate and overly short reminder of the Digital Singularity. As computers become faster, smarter, and more autonomous, they can exceed humans. (Digital Singularity Preparedness)

Here’s a bit more depth and some implications.

The world is changing quickly. Change has been accelerating. It is easy to say this is only a computer thing, but some futurists point out that it took us thousands of years to discover how to control fire, then we plateaued (what a great way to use up vowels in Scrabble) until someone invented cities and agriculture, hundreds of years of exploration, then decades for developing science, then fewer decades for the Industrial Revolution, which lead to years after the invention of computers, and then… Those changes were accelerating, and pardon any non-technical approximations because I’m not trying to do an academic dissertation here. Others have documented it well.

The Digital Singularity is based on the digital, the computer, the technical aspects of change. Previous changes were driven by human time. We also had to enable other human changes like organized societies, experiments in economies and governmental systems, and expanding with the technology as it revealed where we fit into what we consider reality. Now, change is also being driven by technology changing technology. Computers took a long time to develop because humans had to understand what was going on in there. Operating system updates took many years, and still include many flaws. But, as computers have become more capable, those changes are happening more rapidly as the computers can help write the software. At some point, computers can update their own software, or at least the software for the next generation. Thanks for the help.

Now, however, change can happen at computer speeds instead of human speeds. From eons to millennia to centuries to decades to years to months, to…

2023 started with the early adopters wowing over systems like ChatGPT. First, it was a curiosity. Then, AI could get good grades on some tests. A few months later, AIs could pass medical and law exams. Companies started hiring AIs for simple things like Help Chats, writing ads and simple articles, and also stubbing their corporate and electronic toes. The question some people have been asking for a long time was whether there was a limit.

My guess at the speed of change suggested major advancements by the end of 2023. (This is also why my book, Firewatcher, came out in 2022. I wanted to beat the rush, and the rush caught up to me. More on that story about that story in another post and story to come.)

Finally, I get back to those pesky bits of news.

Enough people are worried about how to contain AI. Can the genie stay in the bottle, or is it already out? The news is that AIs can help other AIs break out of their confinement. Oops. Not only is it unlikely that AIs will be perpetually contained, they’ve now demonstrated that AIs can bash the bottles. The speed limit has gone from organic to electronic, from heartbeats to CPU time. Our accelerated civilization may have just been given a boost of rocket fuel. Hit the nitrous!

Ah, but at least we build the machines. That will slow everything down. Except, many processes are automated. Ah, but we control the automation. Except that the other pesky news item was that machines, particularly nano-machines, can duplicate themselves. That’s the grey goo disaster scenario: machines that chew up what’s around them to make more of them, leaving the remaining useless materials as a grey goo that floods our planet.

OK, but let’s get real. Those are two milestones. We haven’t hit the Digital Singularity with changes every few minutes, and the machines are not marching across the world. But are we near practical limits? Will we know it happens before, or only after, it happens?

(Yeah, this will be a long one. I’ll try to pick up the pace.)

Climate change. Oh yeah, that’s easy to summarize – Not. Actually, it may be easier to summarize because its changes have been easier to see. Weather has been bad enough that more people are realizing that this really is something new. Insurance companies are already indirectly convincing people to migrate around climate change because the companies are less likely to issue policies in vulnerable areas. Wildfires and floods and hurricanes seem to be the main reasons that some regions are too expensive to live in, unless you’re willing to take the risk. Even if you are willing to take the risk, lenders may not be willing to help people buy houses there. Ah, but as long as you can pay cash, that’s not an issue. By the way, wildfires and floods and hurricanes sound like the classic elements, fire, water, and air. Earth is too, as landslides happen, but that seems to be less of a mass migration enabler.

None of those disasters is so new that we don’t have names for them. But, they’re happening more frequently, in more places, and to greater extents.

The newer phenomena are things like the sinkholes in Siberia, glaciers melting and calving, and increased desertification. The extreme measures being taken to provide basics like clean water are not side issues. They’re moving hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people.

This is all happening sooner than expected, faster than expected, and in ways we didn’t expect. And, there doesn’t seem to be enough counter changes. Maybe next year, because more sustainable practices are being enacted by individuals and corporations, some for purely economic reasons.

And that’s probably a good time to segue to (shudder) politics (shudder). A disclosure: I am an Independent, with an emphasis on capitalizing the I. I suspect this next section may not mention any political party by name, so breathe easy or wonder how I can avoid such identifications.

Take politics back a few layers. Think Politics. Think Systems Of Governments.

Many countries are being surprised by their populace. Many people are angry about not being heard, or only the other folks being heard, or corruption that is taken for granted, or key issues being treated as yet another pawn in the game called getting elected, or at least staying in power.

Humans started as social creatures. Some time later, we officially evolved to be ‘humans.’ We became tribal. I am fascinated by the story of Gobekli Tepe, a site from over 10,000 years ago. Some time around there, we began getting organized. Cities, countries, empires followed. From tribes we got chieftains, then royalty, then variations like democracy and republics. (Whew, nearly mentioned some parties.) As well as socialism and communism. I’ll let you decide how theocracies fit in. I don’t think we’re done, yet.

Is there a political system that evolves from our current set of systems? We’ve done it before. And those changes have been accelerating, too. Tribal probably lasted longer than royalty. Our more familiar styles are about 2,500 years old. Socialism and communism seem to be ~250? What will we see in 25 years? Nothing new?

Something will be new because the rest of the world is changing while elected officials decide who gets to hold a gavel instead of actually enabling housing, health, food, education, …

Here’s the way writing works. I didn’t expect to get here, partly because it leads into the scenario that is the back story behind my book, Firewatcher.

Do we reach a point when people are more likely to trust AI than each other? We’re worried about both. People don’t trust people, for ideological reasons. People don’t trust technology because, especially with AI, no one understands it for technical reasons. Gerrymandering? Let computers draw the borders. Elections? Let computers watch the computers. Making tough and unpopular decisions? Humans can procrastinate until it is too late. A logical computer may not have feelings, and may out-prioritize emotions for stabilizing the climate, or providing services essential services. Autonomous cars have accidents, but fewer than humans do, partly because they don’t drink, don’t text, and don’t even sneeze. Doctors aren’t perfect, and neither are computers, but computers can network more extensively and faster than humans.

Since I accidentally steered this discussion right into that scenario, I’ll point out that it is the scenario that initiated my characters’ actions in Firewatcher. In that piece of science fiction, people distrusted people so much that they put the AI, robots, and computers in charge because we were evidently so bad at it. My characters’ response? Leave the planet. (At that point in the story, I let them invent a pocket fusion generator that enabled their flight. Surprise! A company in the real world says they’ve invented one.)

Now, back to reality in 2023.

I don’t know what is going to happen. (#MassiveUnderstatement) But I do know that change is accelerating, and is accelerating in a mathematical way that suggests we’re in the early stages of a technical digital singularity. The changes we are encountering are not theoretical or academic. They are real. We really have to do something about them. We are all individuals, hence, personal finance is personal.

I’d like to find a way to invest in this unknowable future, but I can respond to the situations in and around my life. As a writer, I can see where AI is inevitable and where it isn’t. As a photographer, the same. As a real estate broker, well, that’s doable, but only after several years of turmoil – I think. As a person who helps people with their ideas, yeah, that can work, but too few see the situation we’re in. Human imperfections may be demand because we seek being part of a tribe, something real and human-scaled.

I think AI is going to do more in the background than in the foreground, and the foreground will be fascinating.

I think climate change took us 150 years to get into this mess, and it will take 150 years to turn it around, and 150 years to get it back to this but heading in the right direction. A pocket fusion generator or breakthroughs in math or science can all speed it along.

I think politics can change, I know politics can change; but unless we put the AI or the UN in charge, our fractured society will head through tortuous times.

And then, maybe the aliens show us how to do it.

I can also win more than enough money to let me step away comfortably.

Coming up on 2,000 words? No wonder my arm is getting twingy.

OK. In a few words: Next year’s changes will be faster than this year’s. Any plan that expects things to stay the same for 30 years, like a mortgage, is more fantasy than my science fiction. And yet, plans are necessary. I plan to turn 65 in 2024. As if these other changes weren’t enough, there’s that do.

2024, it won’t be dull. I wonder what will happen before we get there.

Irony alert. I now use Grammarly. Almost all of my posts have been first drafts with spellcheck to polish. Now, I trust the computer to find errors I would miss. See a trend?