As a young adult in 2007, what cliff were we close to?

The GFC was a big recession, but I never thought society was near collapse.

It felt like the entire global financial system had a chance of collapsing.

We were pretty close to a collapse of the existing financial system. Maybe we’d be better off now if it happened, but the interim devastation would have been costly.

We weren't that far away from ATMs refusing to hand out cash, banks limiting withdrawals from accounts (if your bank hadn't already gone under), and a subsequent complete collapse of the financial system. The only thing that saved us from that was an extraordinary intervention by governments, something I am not sure they would be capable of doing today.

I think corporations can definitely transform society in the near future. I don't think it will be a positive transformation, but it will be a transformation.

Most of all, AI will exacerbate the lack of trust in people and institutions that was kicked into high gear by the internet. It will be easy and cheap to convince large numbers of people about almost anything.

I worry that if the reality lives up to investors dreams it will be massively disruptive for society which will lead us down dark paths. On the other hand if it _doesn't_ live up to their dreams, then there is so much invested in that dream financially that it will lead to massive societal disruption when the public is left holding the bag, which will also lead us down dark paths.

It's already made it impossible to trust half of the content i read online.

Whenever i use search terms to ask a specific question these days theres usually a page of slop dedicated to the answer which appears top for relevancy.

Once i realize it is slop i realize the relevant information could be hallicinated so i cant trust it.

At the same time im seeing a huge upswing in probable human created content being accused of being slop.

We're seeing a tragedy of the information commons play out on an enormous scale at hyperspeed.

You trust nearly half??!!??

You are assuming that the change can only happen in the west.

The rest of the world has mostly been experiencing industrialisation, and was only indirectly affected by the great crash.

If there is a transformation in the rest of the world the west cannot escape it.

A lot of people in the west seem to have their heads in the sand, very much like when Japan and China tried to ignore the west.

China is the world's second biggest economy by nominal GDP, India the fourth. We have a globalised economy where everything is interlinked.

When I look at my own country it has proven to be open to change. There are people alive today who remember Christianity now we swear in a gay prime minister.

In that sense Western countries have proven that they are intellectualy very nimble.

Three of the best known Christians I have known in my life are gay. Two are priests (one Anglican, one Catholic). Obviously the Catholic priest had taken a vow of celibacy anyway to its entirely immaterial. I did read an interview of a celeb friend (also now a priest!) of his that said he (the priest I knew) thought people did not know he was gay we all knew, just did not make a fuss about it.

Even if you accept the idea that gay sex is a sin, the entire basis of Christianity is that we are all sinners. Possessing wealth is a failure to follow Jesus's commands for instance. You should be complaining a lot more if the prime minister is rich. Adultery is clearly a more serious sin than having the wrong sort of sex, and I bet your country has had adulterous prime ministers (the UK certainly has had many!).

I think Christians who are obsessed with homosexuality as somehow making people worse than the rest of us, are both failing to understand Christ's message, and saying more about themselves than gays.

If you look at when sodomy laws were abolished, countries with a Christian heritage lead this. There are reasons in the Christian ethos if choice and redemption for this.

> people alive today who remember Christianity now we swear in a gay prime minister

Why would that be a contradiction? Gay people can't be Christian?

I'm still not buying that AI will change society anywhere as much as the internet or smart phones for the matter.

The internet made it so that you can share and access information in a few minute if not seconds.

Smart phones build on the internet by making this sharing and access of information could done from anywhere and by anyone.

AI seems occupies the same space as google in the broader internet ecosystem.I dont know what AI provides me that a few hours of Google searches. It makes information retrieval faster, but that was the never the hard part. The hard part was understanding the information, so that you're able to apply it to your particalar situation.

Being able to write to-do apps X1000 faster is not innovation!