Apropos last week’s “We’re Not Ready for the AI on the Horizon, But People Are Trying,” here is economist and policy analyst Samuel Hammond on what the near future holds: You’ll be able to replace your face and voice with those of someone else in real time, allowing anyone to socially engineer their way into anything. Bots will slide into your DMs and have long, engaging conversations with you until it senses the best moment to send its phishing link… Relationships will fall apart when the AI lets you know, via microexpressions, that he didn’t really mean it when he said he loved you. Copyright will be as obsolete as sodomy law, as thousands of new Taylor Swift albums come into being with a single click. Public comments on new regulations will overflow with millions of cogent and entirely unique submissions that the regulator must, by law, individually read and respond to. Death-by-kamikaze drone will surpass mass shootings as the best way to enact a lurid revenge. The courts, meanwhile, will be flooded with lawsuits because who needs to pay attorney fees when your phone can file an airtight motion for you? You’re welcome to share you’re own technology-oriented near-term predictions for the world, or ones you’re aware of elsewhere, that you think are interesting, worrisome, or at least the kind of things some philosophers should be thinking about. Hammond adds: It doesn’t have to be this way. We can fight AI fire with AI fire and adapt our practices along the way. But there are an awful lot of laws that will need changing. So it’d just help if our leaders understood what’s at stake and seized the first mover advantage. The whole piece is here. (Via Tyler Cowen.) Relatedly, the theme of next year’s Public Philosopy Network Conference is “Facing Technology.”