Superintelligence means many humans will have to radically rethink their purpose in life. "Having a sense of purpose involves having a goal and structuring one's life around that goal. There are different sorts of goals. Some are more subject-oriented and others more world-oriented. For example, one person may have as a goal to learn how to play the flute. It can be intrinsically satisfying to learn a new skill and to play an instrument well, and no one else can learn how to play the flute for that person -- that is something only they can do for themselves; nor does it matter that other people can play the flute better. But another person may have as a goal to provide for their family, or to make a great work of art, or to help the disadvantaged, or to advance a field of science or philosophy. Those are things that others can do, too; nobody with a goal like that has a monopoly on their goal."
"What will happen to those goals in the future? There is a real possibility that we create artificial superintelligence in our lifetimes." "That would mean there's an agent out there that is better than the best of us at providing economically, creating art, helping the disadvantaged, making scientific and philosophical progress and just about anything else that we may want to do. Then the entire second class of goals -- world-oriented goals -- will be meaningless to pursue, as the superintelligence can achieve them for us, far more easily, quickly and efficiently than we could ever hope to."
