People constantly talk as if ‘AI’ is a single future you can accept or fight. But the whole point of AI is that it’s an intelligence that you build. And there are myriad possible artificial intelligences one might conceivably build. A mind is a complex thing. Perhaps the biggest question for the AI future is which ones to build.
The attitude called being ‘pro-AI’ is actually being in favor of populating the future with those entities arising from whatever the least thoughtful company first builds and loses control of. Wanting AI that is carefully chosen and thus more awesome is known as being ‘anti-AI’.
This aspect of the AI discourse feels like setting out to buy a car, and your partner being hell-bent on buying the very first car you come across, and when you try to argue that it would be better to hold off and choose a less shit car, them just telling you how amazing cars are, and how they can’t believe you don’t like cars, and explaining their childhood dream of driving, and castigating you for being opposed to car-purchasing progress when your lives will be so much better as car owners. (And meanwhile their chosen car is a piece of junk that the car salesman himself puts 10% on the immediate fiery destruction of if you drive it, and you are pretty sure there are Lamborghinis in another corner of this lot..)
People constantly talk as if ‘AI’ is a single future you can accept or fight. But the whole point of AI is that it’s an intelligence that you build. And there are myriad possible artificial intelligences one might conceivably build. A mind is a complex thing. Perhaps the biggest question for the AI future is which ones to build.
The attitude called being ‘pro-AI’ is actually being in favor of populating the future with those entities arising from whatever the least thoughtful company first builds and loses control of. Wanting AI that is carefully chosen and thus more awesome is known as being ‘anti-AI’.
This aspect of the AI discourse feels like setting out to buy a car, and your partner being hell-bent on buying the very first car you come across, and when you try to argue that it would be better to hold off and choose a less shit car, them just telling you how amazing cars are, and how they can’t believe you don’t like cars, and explaining their childhood dream of driving, and castigating you for being opposed to car-purchasing progress when your lives will be so much better as car owners. (And meanwhile their chosen car is a piece of junk that the car salesman himself puts 10% on the immediate fiery destruction of if you drive it, and you are pretty sure there are Lamborghinis in another corner of this lot..)