What is civilization if not the amalgamation of people?
If sentiment around people is that they don't want this (and that seems to be the case, based on many many articles like the above, as well as opinion surveys), then who are you to tell them what's good for them?
People don't seem to want an improverishment of mind and soul in exchange for vague promises of some sort of other abundance.
> Why are they being forced to that dubious trade?
Because it's just the prisoner's dilemma in disguise. Most people don't really like the idea of AI, a lot of people especially outside of programming hate it, and I bet deep down inside a lot of programmers would prefer if AI never existed.
But it's easier to say that AI will bring great wonders because the alternative is acknowledging the reality - the diminishing returns of technology. And that brings a lot of cognitive dissonance if you're a programmer.
I'm not sure it maps well to game theory. I think it's more of a false dilemma.
There is the old adage in many academic fields that "progress happens one funeral at a time." It's an age-old, rueful take on how our own learning and adaptation proceeds within a collective society. It is a rendering of an objective truth seen at the intersection of evolutionary processes, memetics, and the human condition. It is not a call to action.
Sometimes, I think the most worrisome thing is the ever so slight possibility that some clever, naive upstart will hear this adage and, rather than ponder the lesson about patience and complex social systems, instead conclude that the short path to a lot of progress is a bunch of killing.
Even if we ignore the obvious psychopathy it takes to embrace such an idea, it is still fantastically myopic. Yes, in a hypothetical way it might happen... after the great chaos, some new civilization might emerge with an impressive growth spurt.
But, it is infantile fantasy to believe that such chaos can be applied in a goal-directed fashion, or that the perpetrator(s) can expect to survive it and enjoy the result. Nobody can control who nor what knowledge passes through the gauntlet, nor what direction it spins after that.
What troubles me most, perhaps, is that the current zeitgeist makes me think some people are oblivious to these caveats.
It wasn't programmers who brought us the idea that all problems, obstacles and goals can be conceptualised as an insufficiency of code, apps or gadgets, without any thought to politics, negative externalities, institutions, or philosophy.
That came from SV technocrats and associated capital owners.
If sentiment around people is that they don't want this (and that seems to be the case, based on many many articles like the above, as well as opinion surveys), then who are you to tell them what's good for them?
People don't seem to want an improverishment of mind and soul in exchange for vague promises of some sort of other abundance.
Why are they being forced to that dubious trade?
Because it's just the prisoner's dilemma in disguise. Most people don't really like the idea of AI, a lot of people especially outside of programming hate it, and I bet deep down inside a lot of programmers would prefer if AI never existed.
But it's easier to say that AI will bring great wonders because the alternative is acknowledging the reality - the diminishing returns of technology. And that brings a lot of cognitive dissonance if you're a programmer.
There is the old adage in many academic fields that "progress happens one funeral at a time." It's an age-old, rueful take on how our own learning and adaptation proceeds within a collective society. It is a rendering of an objective truth seen at the intersection of evolutionary processes, memetics, and the human condition. It is not a call to action.
Sometimes, I think the most worrisome thing is the ever so slight possibility that some clever, naive upstart will hear this adage and, rather than ponder the lesson about patience and complex social systems, instead conclude that the short path to a lot of progress is a bunch of killing.
Even if we ignore the obvious psychopathy it takes to embrace such an idea, it is still fantastically myopic. Yes, in a hypothetical way it might happen... after the great chaos, some new civilization might emerge with an impressive growth spurt.
But, it is infantile fantasy to believe that such chaos can be applied in a goal-directed fashion, or that the perpetrator(s) can expect to survive it and enjoy the result. Nobody can control who nor what knowledge passes through the gauntlet, nor what direction it spins after that.
What troubles me most, perhaps, is that the current zeitgeist makes me think some people are oblivious to these caveats.
Same here. "Are we all going crazy?" is the feeling I often have.
That came from SV technocrats and associated capital owners.