Probably everybody likes AI more than I do. I don't want it, I don't trust it, I don't need it, and I think it's anti-human from root to branch. Do we need more moral behavior, or less? Call me a religious fanatic if you want, but it seems like creating AI is like creating a life form without a soul, and when we encounter humans who act like they have no soul, we generally call them monsters, don't we? When you read the Bible, the first commandment is: Thou shall have no other gods before Me. Read what happens when people try to invade God's turf, and try not to think, "Oh, crap." You've read about Sodom and Gomorrah? Of course I've watched the TOS Star Trek episode where the galaxy's most brilliant computer scientist, Dr. Richard Daystrom, creates "The Ultimate Computer," to replace men in space. It doesn't work out so well, even though he gave it human characteristics he called "engrams." We're playing fire here, and Big Brother on steroids seems like an inevitable, and least troublesome result. Re-examining the option of going off the grid, anyone? In the words of my late grandma: "Uf da!"
I think the one I'm least concerned about is the "mass unemployment" one. That's not because there won't be plenty of disruption as you suggest. But unlike some of the other issues you raise, we've been to this movie before.
Long before "offshoring," automation was supposed to be the death-knell of the blue-collar workforce. The great Phil Ochs even wrote a song about it:
And that wasn't the first time. Far from it. When I was in college, we read Jan Huizinga's *The Waning of the Middle Ages*. As the instructor discussed, it was really about *The Tumultuous and Catastrophic End of the Middle Ages*. And there were similarly large upheavals during the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.
But for every job that was eliminated, a dozen more were created, most of which weren't even imaginable in the earlier time. And I fully expect that to be the case here as well.
Or--in the alternative, where robots occupy all the niches in the economy--we may well achieve an end to the Age of Scarcity, at least in material terms. Then the issue will be, what will people do to occupy themselves? Well, even in an age of material plenty, there are still "positional goods." As I always say to the advocates of the Gene Roddenberry vision of same, you may be able to get any meal you like in the Enterprise mess hall, but there's still only twelve *Constitution*-class heavy cruisers...and therefore only twelve captain's billets to fill on those vessels.
Similarly, I assume that even in an age of material plenty people will find things to compete for that bear no material reward and yet are worth fighting for. And again...we see that now. While I'm sure some Olympic competitors are doing it for the endorsements, the vast majority are doing it for the "self-actualization," to borrow Abraham Maslow's term for the apex of the Pyramid of Needs.
I should note that this, too, has been foreshadowed, notably in the concept of Nietzsche's "Last Men."
Bryan Johnson, the guy who got rich creating Venmo and now is known for the extreme life extension stuff he does, has theorized that the loss of jobs plus the inability to know what's real could create a type of society wide psychosis. Given the way things are going in our society, I don't find that far fetched all, although like with all of this stuff, time will tell.
Oh, not disagreeing at all. In fact that was the point Huizinga was making…that we think of the end of the Middle Ages as a Good Thing, but to the people living then, it represented a complete upending of everything they’d known for generations. And I expect a similar level of disruption was evident during the transition from agrarian to industrial societies.
My point is that (1) we’ve survived similar upheavals before, and (2) we’ve a lot more experience with rapid change than either the medievals or the early-moderns on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution. A fortiori we should have at least as much resilience.
Well, if you're betting, you definitely bet that we survive, because we have a for a long time and have also handled some big upheavals. But, it's good for people to know there's at least a question on that front =).
"What happens when you can customize everything from looks to personalities to kinks, that AI can deliver on a screen or as a robot better than any human being ever could? "
I believe the TV SF series *Futurama* already addressed this... ;-)
On a more serious note...we're already seeing some of that today with online porn, AI "girlfriends," and sexbots, so I do think the concern is well-founded.
Probably everybody likes AI more than I do. I don't want it, I don't trust it, I don't need it, and I think it's anti-human from root to branch. Do we need more moral behavior, or less? Call me a religious fanatic if you want, but it seems like creating AI is like creating a life form without a soul, and when we encounter humans who act like they have no soul, we generally call them monsters, don't we? When you read the Bible, the first commandment is: Thou shall have no other gods before Me. Read what happens when people try to invade God's turf, and try not to think, "Oh, crap." You've read about Sodom and Gomorrah? Of course I've watched the TOS Star Trek episode where the galaxy's most brilliant computer scientist, Dr. Richard Daystrom, creates "The Ultimate Computer," to replace men in space. It doesn't work out so well, even though he gave it human characteristics he called "engrams." We're playing fire here, and Big Brother on steroids seems like an inevitable, and least troublesome result. Re-examining the option of going off the grid, anyone? In the words of my late grandma: "Uf da!"
I think the one I'm least concerned about is the "mass unemployment" one. That's not because there won't be plenty of disruption as you suggest. But unlike some of the other issues you raise, we've been to this movie before.
Long before "offshoring," automation was supposed to be the death-knell of the blue-collar workforce. The great Phil Ochs even wrote a song about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGeZ9UnDrOo&list=RDEGeZ9UnDrOo&start_radio=1
And that wasn't the first time. Far from it. When I was in college, we read Jan Huizinga's *The Waning of the Middle Ages*. As the instructor discussed, it was really about *The Tumultuous and Catastrophic End of the Middle Ages*. And there were similarly large upheavals during the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.
But for every job that was eliminated, a dozen more were created, most of which weren't even imaginable in the earlier time. And I fully expect that to be the case here as well.
Or--in the alternative, where robots occupy all the niches in the economy--we may well achieve an end to the Age of Scarcity, at least in material terms. Then the issue will be, what will people do to occupy themselves? Well, even in an age of material plenty, there are still "positional goods." As I always say to the advocates of the Gene Roddenberry vision of same, you may be able to get any meal you like in the Enterprise mess hall, but there's still only twelve *Constitution*-class heavy cruisers...and therefore only twelve captain's billets to fill on those vessels.
Similarly, I assume that even in an age of material plenty people will find things to compete for that bear no material reward and yet are worth fighting for. And again...we see that now. While I'm sure some Olympic competitors are doing it for the endorsements, the vast majority are doing it for the "self-actualization," to borrow Abraham Maslow's term for the apex of the Pyramid of Needs.
I should note that this, too, has been foreshadowed, notably in the concept of Nietzsche's "Last Men."
Bryan Johnson, the guy who got rich creating Venmo and now is known for the extreme life extension stuff he does, has theorized that the loss of jobs plus the inability to know what's real could create a type of society wide psychosis. Given the way things are going in our society, I don't find that far fetched all, although like with all of this stuff, time will tell.
Oh, not disagreeing at all. In fact that was the point Huizinga was making…that we think of the end of the Middle Ages as a Good Thing, but to the people living then, it represented a complete upending of everything they’d known for generations. And I expect a similar level of disruption was evident during the transition from agrarian to industrial societies.
My point is that (1) we’ve survived similar upheavals before, and (2) we’ve a lot more experience with rapid change than either the medievals or the early-moderns on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution. A fortiori we should have at least as much resilience.
Well, if you're betting, you definitely bet that we survive, because we have a for a long time and have also handled some big upheavals. But, it's good for people to know there's at least a question on that front =).
Amen to that, brother. Amen to that.
"What happens when you can customize everything from looks to personalities to kinks, that AI can deliver on a screen or as a robot better than any human being ever could? "
I believe the TV SF series *Futurama* already addressed this... ;-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPQJBgWwg3o
On a more serious note...we're already seeing some of that today with online porn, AI "girlfriends," and sexbots, so I do think the concern is well-founded.
Yes, it's already sucking people in and what they're doing so far, is nothing to what's coming fairly soon.
Aye aye, brother...