F*ck the “A.I. Revolution”
Honestly and with full sincerity: f*ck the “A.I. revolution.”
I believe this technology will create a societal unraveling in more ways than one and none of us will be able to stop it. The train’s already left the station.
It’s crazy that humans assume all technological improvements are a net positive if they offer convenience or speed. Much of the advancement in consumer technology is designed to agitate a problem that didn’t exist before, then create FOMO to drive adoption.
Everything has a cost. No free lunches, ever.
Even if mass adoption of sophisticated A.I. does solve some real problems, we have to consider the new problems that will be created as a result.
Tiny problems such as:
>> A.I. becoming sentient and killing us (have you seen the Bing A.I.? WTF.)
>> Society valuing computer intelligence above human intelligence.
>> Watering down the value of organic, skill-based creativity and lifelong mastery in favor of feeding the A.I. prompts.
>> The increasing deterioration of connection to nature and each other, spending even more time on a screen / tethered than we already do.
>> The absolute impossibility of knowing what’s real and what’s computer-generated (deep fakes are already a serious problem. What happens when nothing can be verified anymore?)
>> The incredible ease of tracking and controlling the population via data (A.I. + VR + CBDCs = clusterfuck. Meta is already able to track your eye movement and determine emotional states that will allow them to feed you specific info)
>> The loss of jobs (easy to say “JuSt Get Moar SKIllz” but the impact will be tremendous and unpredictable)
These are just a few I thought of quickly. If you don’t consider these downsides and only see the panacea of the future, you’re naive!
Artificial intelligence is not designed for public service. It’s created by private entities with profit motives.
If you think Big Tech is controlling or restrictive now, wait until A.I. takes full control in the next decade. Think of all the privacy we’ve already given up.
Some say A.I. is just a tool and it’s up to humans to use it correctly. I call B.S. That’s also what they say about guns in the classes I’ve taken. But firearms are not neutral technology. Their only purpose is to kill.
No technology made for profit can be neutral.
If A.I. is made by private entities whose primary purpose is profit, then it’s no different than social media on steroids. How long until the tool is using you?
To be sure, A.I. will do some incredible things for us — but there will undoubtedly be a steep cost. We need to begin asking questions rather than just laying down and blindly accepting any new technology that is handed to us.
Neil Postman outlined seven specific questions re: technology in his 1996 lecture “The Surrender of Culture to Technology”:
- What is the problem to which the technology is the purported solution?
- Who will benefit from it and who will pay for it?
- What new problems will be created by solving the old problems?
- Which people / institutions will be most seriously harmed by the technology?
- What changes in language will be enforced by the technology?
- What sort of people / institutions will acquire special political power because of the technology?
- What alternate uses might be made of the technology?
Good ol’ Postman has been dead for 20 years and I’m sure nobody cares about this stuff because they’re too busy gushing over the fact that GPT4 can create recipes from the scraps you have in your fridge.
But I’ve been thinking about these questions heavily and I’m not convinced that the rewards outweigh the risks. Personally, I’m looking forward to living in the f*cking woods.
But that’s just me.
What do you think?
