There's nothing here that a wide reading of science fiction has not already contemplated. Santiago could insert Trump wherever he mention's AI and it'd be a better, more likely scare-story. Also, your reading of pre-enlightenment followers is condescending and would insult any historian. People followed the leader because they were okay trusting a black box? C'mon we're not that superior, and our ancestors had better reasons than that.
The whole AI controversy is a tempest in a teapot driven by hype and VC largesse. AI are nothing more than computer programs slurping up, mashing together, and vomiting out a homogenized slurry of data. They do not generate any kind of knowledge because they don't know anything, they don't think, they don't feel, they don't understand. AI is just a pile of clothes with no emperor inside. When the money stops flowing it will melt into air just like NFTs did and the same rubes will be alternately heralding and doomsaying the next gimmicky computer scam.
The optimistic view might be that the core problem of democracy could be solved by AI.
One of the challenges I attempt to solve in my writing is the problem of aggregating the will and knowledge of the people, the “wisdom of the crowd,” into effective policy.
Perhaps AI can do this better than democracy itself can? If that were the case, the machine was just the collective wisdom of all humanity, would trusting the machine be a problem at all?
I think on this have we not already arrived there? Our appeal to sources of authority is not unlike those in ancient times. The internet unloading us with too much data for our minds to compute does not create free thinking but entirely the opposite. More often than not my students use these resources as tools not to enable their thinking but to enable their passivity of thought. AI is the next step for sure in terms of 'rewriting' which might actually not be as reminiscent of ancient times as the essay supposes. As far as my knowledge extends, ancient traditions did not seek to rewrite or reimagine history and culture but merely to continue it. AI perhaps then offers something much more disturbing than simply ancient tradition as an authority to explain how we live but a tool to 'push forward' beyond the realms of our control.
AI will complete - on current indications anyway - a process that has been underway for many decades now: the encirclement of ever-fragile Western Democracy by the goggle-eyed warriors of the Social Justice Religion. The difference being that AI will entrench the religion as a kind of cosmos - further argument or proselytising no longer necessary. But democracy's flower has been withering anyway... becoming just a kind of plaything....part of the media entertainment industry while real government meanwhile has increasingly been a permanent and almost unchallengeable techno-bureaucracy constantly topped up by 'experts' emerging from its 'one-party' universities.
So is there any hope - from a conservative perspective? I think there will at some point be a major societal crash. And then? I don't know... but hope springs eternal. As I wrote here a while back: "Certainly some conservative pessimism about progress is mere grumpiness and some of it – just like its counterpart in the infinitely larger Progressive media – is 21st century-style tribal bigotry. But at its best it is a wry observation – based on close observation of friends and enemies, family and colleagues, literature and ‘current affairs’ - that there are, and always will be, honesty and self delusion, real and faux expressions of generosity of spirit, bullies dressed up as champions of liberty...wise men and fools in other words." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/are-we-making-progress
Have we not already arrived? Vast segments of the population already revere their preferred politician or political party and consider him/it to have the God-like wisdom necessary to make all decisions. The messiah will save us all from evil. Except for the other side which will burn in hell. Really? Is this how we want to live? Substituting an Artificially Intelligent machine for an Unintelligent Autocrat may make little difference. Unless the AI exterminates all of humanity instead of just half of it. AI could get rid of the source of carbon emissions and climate change. Poof! Problem solved. . . Next?
Where is the “scary” button? It may be that the laughable re-write of history by some lackey at Google or wherever, is just the caution that we needed to put AI more in the novelty category rather than the “science“ category. I prefer my science repeatable and my history documented.
Watching the advance of AI, I sometimes think the computer and the internet were mistakes (says the guy typing this on a smartphone).
I’d be leery of any appeals to authority arguments whether it’s “trust the science or trust the machine”
Proof of work will always be required, which is why a collaboration of AI and blockchain may be required for the future
There's nothing here that a wide reading of science fiction has not already contemplated. Santiago could insert Trump wherever he mention's AI and it'd be a better, more likely scare-story. Also, your reading of pre-enlightenment followers is condescending and would insult any historian. People followed the leader because they were okay trusting a black box? C'mon we're not that superior, and our ancestors had better reasons than that.
The whole AI controversy is a tempest in a teapot driven by hype and VC largesse. AI are nothing more than computer programs slurping up, mashing together, and vomiting out a homogenized slurry of data. They do not generate any kind of knowledge because they don't know anything, they don't think, they don't feel, they don't understand. AI is just a pile of clothes with no emperor inside. When the money stops flowing it will melt into air just like NFTs did and the same rubes will be alternately heralding and doomsaying the next gimmicky computer scam.
The optimistic view might be that the core problem of democracy could be solved by AI.
One of the challenges I attempt to solve in my writing is the problem of aggregating the will and knowledge of the people, the “wisdom of the crowd,” into effective policy.
Perhaps AI can do this better than democracy itself can? If that were the case, the machine was just the collective wisdom of all humanity, would trusting the machine be a problem at all?
I think on this have we not already arrived there? Our appeal to sources of authority is not unlike those in ancient times. The internet unloading us with too much data for our minds to compute does not create free thinking but entirely the opposite. More often than not my students use these resources as tools not to enable their thinking but to enable their passivity of thought. AI is the next step for sure in terms of 'rewriting' which might actually not be as reminiscent of ancient times as the essay supposes. As far as my knowledge extends, ancient traditions did not seek to rewrite or reimagine history and culture but merely to continue it. AI perhaps then offers something much more disturbing than simply ancient tradition as an authority to explain how we live but a tool to 'push forward' beyond the realms of our control.
AI will complete - on current indications anyway - a process that has been underway for many decades now: the encirclement of ever-fragile Western Democracy by the goggle-eyed warriors of the Social Justice Religion. The difference being that AI will entrench the religion as a kind of cosmos - further argument or proselytising no longer necessary. But democracy's flower has been withering anyway... becoming just a kind of plaything....part of the media entertainment industry while real government meanwhile has increasingly been a permanent and almost unchallengeable techno-bureaucracy constantly topped up by 'experts' emerging from its 'one-party' universities.
So is there any hope - from a conservative perspective? I think there will at some point be a major societal crash. And then? I don't know... but hope springs eternal. As I wrote here a while back: "Certainly some conservative pessimism about progress is mere grumpiness and some of it – just like its counterpart in the infinitely larger Progressive media – is 21st century-style tribal bigotry. But at its best it is a wry observation – based on close observation of friends and enemies, family and colleagues, literature and ‘current affairs’ - that there are, and always will be, honesty and self delusion, real and faux expressions of generosity of spirit, bullies dressed up as champions of liberty...wise men and fools in other words." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/are-we-making-progress
Have we not already arrived? Vast segments of the population already revere their preferred politician or political party and consider him/it to have the God-like wisdom necessary to make all decisions. The messiah will save us all from evil. Except for the other side which will burn in hell. Really? Is this how we want to live? Substituting an Artificially Intelligent machine for an Unintelligent Autocrat may make little difference. Unless the AI exterminates all of humanity instead of just half of it. AI could get rid of the source of carbon emissions and climate change. Poof! Problem solved. . . Next?
Where is the “scary” button? It may be that the laughable re-write of history by some lackey at Google or wherever, is just the caution that we needed to put AI more in the novelty category rather than the “science“ category. I prefer my science repeatable and my history documented.