AI Singularity and Agency

While the list of potential AI-improvements of life and work is seemingly endless, there is also the tempered and ultimate threats that AI at a stage of singularity may take over the control of society. Pessimists and optimists both seem to share the view that AI will cause greater change of human society than all former technological innovations added together – for good or for bad. AI and AGI (artificial general intelligence) are deemed a greater ultimate threat to human society than all other, natural and anthropogenic risk factors added together. Adding the challenges of AI to the environmental burden, we end up with the challenge total of the green transition and AI, concluding Part One of the book. For the presentation of a great number of additional challenges and mitigation opportunities, Part Two starts with the realization that predicted (latent) environmental damage is becoming manifest. It is not automatic that manifest damage will lead to concerted action, however. Barriers include societal disintegration and political-economic straight-jackets, the need for decoupling of growth, for redistribution of wealth and income, and for coping with AI-generated productivity gains and potential unemployment.