An interest can arrive years after education has ended. An adult can discover an ability they never had occasion to try. Someone in retirement can return to a question abandoned when work and family responsibilities left too little time.
The Society imagines AI helping people notice and pursue those possibilities throughout their lives. An intelligence familiar with your interests could recognize a connection you had missed or suggest an approachable way into a difficult subject.
An opportunity can be valuable even if it produces no exceptional achievement. Someone may enjoy learning an instrument without performing publicly. A hobby can occupy years without becoming a business. An investigation can be interesting and remain unfinished.
We want a civilization able to support those outcomes. Greater abundance could reduce the pressure to turn every interest into a source of income or evidence of usefulness.
Invitations from AI should leave people free to refuse. Having potential is no reason to be continually assessed or assigned tasks. The value of more opportunities is that a person can decide which, if any, to pursue.
Some people want demanding projects. Others want quiet lives among people they love. Interests can change, and periods devoted to care or rest can matter as much as periods of achievement.
Freedom from compulsory labor would make more of these choices practical. We want productive capacity to support people's lives without requiring all of them to converge on the same idea of success. Our account of human value includes preferences no institution would have thought to prescribe.
Learning also requires more than information. Encouragement can matter, as can finding someone who shares an unusual interest. AI could help people meet, choose an appropriate next question, or approach an old difficulty differently. Intelligent institutions could improve the material circumstances that make continued learning possible.
We are describing capabilities we want to develop and make broadly available. Their benefit would include the chance to keep changing over a lifetime, with help that responds to a person's circumstances. What someone has already done would leave open what they might still enjoy becoming.
