An advent of a "messy non-linear process"

When it comes to AI, I'm a Luddite, perfectly happy to use my own good brain to do my thinking. Take your fancy, energy-hogging chips and shove 'em, as far as I'm concerned.  I'm sure there are some useful applications for this human invention, but we haven't seen them yet. Instead we get slop, enhanced enshitification of the web world, and more garbage all around. (Though I have to admit my Erudite Partner thinks language translations via AI are pretty good.)

Less backward observers than I offer interesting thoughts. Here's David Rothkopf who is sure there is something there, though sometimes uncertain whether that is a good thing. On balance, he comes down for AI's positives. I appreciated his historical analogy and ruminations on likely effects. You can find David at his podcast: Siliconsciousness: AI Fears, Scapegoats, and Myths.

It took almost two hundred years for the industrial revolution to spread worldwide. It transformed life and society in massive, immeasurable ways. But, fortunately, the pace of change gave us time to consider the outcomes, their implications, what was desirable and what was not. 

This revolution will be just as sweeping but will come at us all much faster. While it would be much better for the world for us to have the benefit of more grounded, thoughtful philosophical discussions about what we want the changes to look like (and what we should avoid), I fear the pace of change will outstrip our ability to understand what is happening and to guide it. 

Indeed, while most people see the AI revolution as one impacting our ability to process massive amounts of data then act on our analyses, I see it as one that may most notably be different from past techquakes that have shaken the globe in terms of its implications for the speed of life, decision-making and wave upon wave of future changes.

That creates a responsibility for each of us, regardless of where we are in life, to educate ourselves—because the implications are not just for technology or technologists or markets or jobs but rather they touch virtually every aspect of every life and will to an increasing degree going forward.

Will we be able to stay ahead of it all? Make the right choices? Almost certainly not. Will we be able to increasingly better handle this technology if we make that our mission? Yes. And that should be our collective and individual goal.

I should add that having been involved in and around AI and related fields for a long time now and having the benefit of speaking to leading experts in the field from all disciplines and from across the political spectrum, I have emerged optimistic about AI and its potential for making our lives much better even as I have grown aware of areas of real concern (as noted above).

Why? As a rule I believe in progress even though I am acutely aware it is a messy, non-linear process. 

Charlie Warzel [gift] at The Atlantic (which discloses an AI partnership relationship) describes the technology in terms which seem appropriate to the Christian Advent season, both apocalyptic and eschatological. He's a journalist whose business is to follow the meanderings of the tech bros who have brought us to the AI era. Like most informed observers, he both marvels and feels some skepticism about the hype deluge. 

... If you believe that Silicon Valley’s elites have lost their minds, foisting a useful-but-not-magical technology on society, declaring that it’s building God, investing historic amounts of money in its development, and fusing the fate of its tools with the fate of the global economy, being furious makes sense.

... We are waiting because a defining feature of generative AI, according to its true believers, is that it is never in its final form. Like ChatGPT before its release, every model in some way is also a “low-key research preview”—a proof of concept for what’s really possible. You think the models are good now? Ha! Just wait. Depending on your views, this is trademark showmanship, a truism of innovation, a hostage situation, or a long con. Where you fall on this rapture-to-bullshit continuum likely tracks with how optimistic you are for the future. But you are waiting nonetheless—for a bubble to burst, for a genie to arrive with a plan to print money, for a bailout, for Judgment Day. In that way, generative AI is a faith-based technology.

It doesn’t matter that the technology is already useful to many, that it can code and write marketing copy and complete basic research tasks. Because Silicon Valley is not selling useful; it’s selling transformation—with all the grand promises, return on investment, genuine risk, and collateral damage that entails. And even if you aren’t buying it, three years out, you’re definitely feeling it. 

I like a little observation Warzel include among his speculations about where all this leads:

... the pope has warned students, “AI cannot ever replace the unique gift that you are to the world ...”