The development of the printing press also led directly to a century of the bloodiest wars in European history, something that people honestly contemplating the potential impacts of technology ought to at least consider.
Your essay is helpful in alleviating unnecessary anxiety; thanks. I'm struck, however, by how you seem to skip over the real dangers of 'bad guys' using AI technology to gum up the works and create all sorts of scams and worse to befuddle us in a befuddling time. Think of the so-called "Dark Web,' for one example. When I was still a working therapist a 13 year old client of mine brought in some images she had found there, which were so revolting that it was all I could manage to keep from freaking out in the consulting room. Pornographic, of course. And then there are things like online gambling, cryptocoins and god knows what else. I confess my aging imagination can't keep up. If we're going to be honest, there's more than job loss we're likely to be dealing with.
The difference between AI and the list of earlier technologies is those technologies actually worked while AI only appears to work. It can help people who are wise enough to understand when the tool delivers useful output and when it produces nonsense.
A hammer is a useful tool in the hands of someone who A) knows what a nail is; B) knows the right and wrong way to place it; and C) knows how to use it without damaging the nail.
The press required smart people to create content and skilled people to operate it. It's output could be consumed by anyone. AI does not produce this paradigm. I would not even say it largely produces GIGO (garbage in garbage out). But it is critical for the user to be able to distinguish when it does produce garbage.
The challenge of the current hype is the misrepresentation that this tool will elevate all human work. I'll be the first in line when the core of AI can be trusted. But the current generation is not on a path to get there. Proceed with caution.
The most crucial transformations in human history are only measured in hindsight, sometimes centuries or even millennia in the making. At the same time, the transformation itself is not the issue.
Our first one was tool-making. At first it only made simple but previously arduous daily tasks easier, but it’s real effect lay in the concept that we could, and thus should alter our environment for our own benefit and use. Millenia later, the full effects of that concept are all too plain. We have mastered our earth, or so we like to think, but at the same time we have produced and twice used a power that could destroy all life on earth, a power previously only awarded to the gods in myth.
The second would be the most far reaching, at least so far. The Agricultural Revolution gave us a a way to populate the earth in a way not possible by all previous methods of food production. Eventually it would free the vast majority of us to do other things. It, combined with technology, would also spread us over the earth in a way once described as a slime mold, covering and destroying everything in its path.
The third was the invention of writing. It freed us from the tyranny of faulty memory and gave us the power to store for the future all the technological, social, religious, and political advances we made, thus enabling us to build on them in ways memory alone would never have made possible.
The fourth was steam power (and all its later cousins) which geometrically enhanced the power of the human and animal arm, thus increasing production levels to previously unimaginable levels. And it vastly increased the amount of detritus both solid and gaseaus, with which we have to deal.
Lastly the computer, with whose innovative power we are still trying to understand and manipulate. AI is its more potent cousin, and descendent.
But in all of this, one of my all-time favorite movie lines comes constantly to mind. In Shane, the classic western, the gunfighter is confronted by the mother of the boy to whom he is showing off his shooting skill. She remonstrates with him, pointing out the damage guns are bringing to their valley. He replies, “A gun is a tool, Marion, as good or as bad as the man using it”.
In that simple sentence Shane has delineated the real issue with all of our technological innovations. The tool is not the isssue. We are the issue.
Technology isn't the risk to humanity that the fatalists make it to be. Ironically the same fatalists tend to be advocates of government policies to mitigate the risks, where it is government policies that are historically responsible for most of the fatal outcomes.
A good example are Apple products. Government policy encouraged American business coupling with communist China where Apple has effectively hired America's best and brightest engineers and sent them to China to train that communist country to become a technical adversary where they take over entire markets and also flow the technology into modern weapon systems.
Today Apple cannot leave China without significant business disruption and decline, and we have effectively empowered an aggressive, paranoid communist adversary. We are heading to a fatal outcome.
Apple technology did not cause this... our American government policies did.
Thanks for sharing optimism. AI is also very important for the future of democracy because there is a lot of potential to use AI tools and programs for including and engaging more people in conversations and decision-making at all levels, including the global level
The development of the printing press also led directly to a century of the bloodiest wars in European history, something that people honestly contemplating the potential impacts of technology ought to at least consider.
True, but there are historical lessons learned for the future
Perhaps the deeper question is whether AGI/ASI will decide to leave anything for us to do. And then what need for us?
Your essay is helpful in alleviating unnecessary anxiety; thanks. I'm struck, however, by how you seem to skip over the real dangers of 'bad guys' using AI technology to gum up the works and create all sorts of scams and worse to befuddle us in a befuddling time. Think of the so-called "Dark Web,' for one example. When I was still a working therapist a 13 year old client of mine brought in some images she had found there, which were so revolting that it was all I could manage to keep from freaking out in the consulting room. Pornographic, of course. And then there are things like online gambling, cryptocoins and god knows what else. I confess my aging imagination can't keep up. If we're going to be honest, there's more than job loss we're likely to be dealing with.
The difference between AI and the list of earlier technologies is those technologies actually worked while AI only appears to work. It can help people who are wise enough to understand when the tool delivers useful output and when it produces nonsense.
A hammer is a useful tool in the hands of someone who A) knows what a nail is; B) knows the right and wrong way to place it; and C) knows how to use it without damaging the nail.
The press required smart people to create content and skilled people to operate it. It's output could be consumed by anyone. AI does not produce this paradigm. I would not even say it largely produces GIGO (garbage in garbage out). But it is critical for the user to be able to distinguish when it does produce garbage.
The challenge of the current hype is the misrepresentation that this tool will elevate all human work. I'll be the first in line when the core of AI can be trusted. But the current generation is not on a path to get there. Proceed with caution.
The most crucial transformations in human history are only measured in hindsight, sometimes centuries or even millennia in the making. At the same time, the transformation itself is not the issue.
Our first one was tool-making. At first it only made simple but previously arduous daily tasks easier, but it’s real effect lay in the concept that we could, and thus should alter our environment for our own benefit and use. Millenia later, the full effects of that concept are all too plain. We have mastered our earth, or so we like to think, but at the same time we have produced and twice used a power that could destroy all life on earth, a power previously only awarded to the gods in myth.
The second would be the most far reaching, at least so far. The Agricultural Revolution gave us a a way to populate the earth in a way not possible by all previous methods of food production. Eventually it would free the vast majority of us to do other things. It, combined with technology, would also spread us over the earth in a way once described as a slime mold, covering and destroying everything in its path.
The third was the invention of writing. It freed us from the tyranny of faulty memory and gave us the power to store for the future all the technological, social, religious, and political advances we made, thus enabling us to build on them in ways memory alone would never have made possible.
The fourth was steam power (and all its later cousins) which geometrically enhanced the power of the human and animal arm, thus increasing production levels to previously unimaginable levels. And it vastly increased the amount of detritus both solid and gaseaus, with which we have to deal.
Lastly the computer, with whose innovative power we are still trying to understand and manipulate. AI is its more potent cousin, and descendent.
But in all of this, one of my all-time favorite movie lines comes constantly to mind. In Shane, the classic western, the gunfighter is confronted by the mother of the boy to whom he is showing off his shooting skill. She remonstrates with him, pointing out the damage guns are bringing to their valley. He replies, “A gun is a tool, Marion, as good or as bad as the man using it”.
In that simple sentence Shane has delineated the real issue with all of our technological innovations. The tool is not the isssue. We are the issue.
Technology isn't the risk to humanity that the fatalists make it to be. Ironically the same fatalists tend to be advocates of government policies to mitigate the risks, where it is government policies that are historically responsible for most of the fatal outcomes.
A good example are Apple products. Government policy encouraged American business coupling with communist China where Apple has effectively hired America's best and brightest engineers and sent them to China to train that communist country to become a technical adversary where they take over entire markets and also flow the technology into modern weapon systems.
Today Apple cannot leave China without significant business disruption and decline, and we have effectively empowered an aggressive, paranoid communist adversary. We are heading to a fatal outcome.
Apple technology did not cause this... our American government policies did.
Thanks for sharing optimism. AI is also very important for the future of democracy because there is a lot of potential to use AI tools and programs for including and engaging more people in conversations and decision-making at all levels, including the global level
Printing press? I thought he was the guy who discovered wheat protein.
Wait, no… that was Glutenberg.
Only one-quarter of the way through and I like this a lot. Nothing like history to demonstrate the wrong-headed narrative.