When I look at why I expect the world to change a lot in the next few years, and why other people expect slower changes, I think a big component is disagreement on the extent to which AI will affect non-computer work. Sure, progamming has sped up massively with Claude Code etc, and models like Astra seem posed to make similar changes to work with spreadsheets and other common business tools, but what work that doesn't include computers at all?

The classic picture of AIs doing things in the world is robots, but I think a more realistic picture of the near future is computers telling people what to do. Leaning into the way the world has become very scifi, we could call this "teleoperating" people. Many things that are hard for robots are very easy for people, there are strong economic reasons that push towards teleoperation, and this bypasses many legal and social limitations on what AI can do. We should expect this to lead to large and rapid changes in the physical world.

One of the most widespread examples today is driving. I put my destination into the GPS, and it tells me what [...]

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First published:
September 13th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mWQSiHG3Qz9qYx3D7/teleoperated-humans

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Teleoperated Humans” by jefftk

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Teleoperated Humans” by jefftk