"The compute did not deploy itself. The $650 billion did not allocate itself. The venture capitalists who decided to pour the resources of a civilization into this particular technology rather than any other — they were not following gravity."
"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
As I've said before, science fiction tried to warn us, over and over again, and nobody listened.
This is where the Amish have the right attitude; they carefully consider every technological advance before deciding how it can be integrated into their society, and reject it if it does not fit their values.
Workers destroyed cotton looms and threshing machines not because they weren't appreciative of not having to do backbreaking labour, but because the gains of the technological advances went to the owners, because the owners had not given the workers the full value of their labour, and so the workers did not have the resources to acquire the machines for themselves while the owners did, and once the owners had the machines they could retain the full value instead of having to give even part of it to the workers. The former workers were just out of a job.
"We, in civilized societies, are rich. Why then are the many poor? Why this painful drudgery for the masses? Why, even to the best paid workman, this uncertainty for the morrow, in the midst of all the wealth inherited from the past, and in spite of the powerful means of production, which could ensure comfort to all in return for a few hours of daily toil?
"The Socialists have said it and repeated it unwearyingly. Daily they reiterate it, demonstrating it by arguments taken from all the sciences. It is because all that is necessary for production — the land, the mines, the highways, machinery, food, shelter, education, knowledge — all have been seized by the few in the course of that long story of robbery, enforced migration and wars, of ignorance and oppression, which has been the life of the human race before it had learned to subdue the forces of Nature. It is because, taking advantage of alleged rights acquired in the past, these few appropriate to-day two-thirds of the products of human labour, and then squander them in the most stupid and shameful way. It is because, having reduced the masses to a point at which they have not the means of subsistence for a month, or even for a week in advance, the few only allow the many to work on condition of themselves receiving the lion’s share. It is because these few prevent the remainder of men from producing the things they need, and force them to produce, not the necessaries of life for all, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolists. In this is the substance of all Socialism." ("The Conquest of Bread")
"[T]he few only allow the many to work on condition of themselves receiving the lion's share."
(This is also why you will see the critique that wage labour is economically no different than slavery, because both involve the labourer, whether employee or slave, receiving a part of the value of their labour to provide for their sustenance, while the employer or master retains the rest of the value despite having done nothing to earn it.)
EDIT: Or, to quote from Populorum progressio:
The Use of Private Property
"He who has the goods of this world and sees his brother in need and closes his heart to him, how does the love of God abide in him?" Everyone knows that the Fathers of the Church laid down the duty of the rich toward the poor in no uncertain terms. As St. Ambrose put it: "You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich." These words indicate that the right to private property is not absolute and unconditional.
No one may appropriate surplus goods solely for his own private use when others lack the bare necessities of life. In short, "as the Fathers of the Church and other eminent theologians tell us, the right of private property may never be exercised to the detriment of the common good." When "private gain and basic community needs conflict with one another," it is for the public authorities "to seek a solution to these questions, with the active involvement of individual citizens and social groups."
There is an interesting novel written about sleeping beside a tiger (on a boat at sea, no less!): Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Pi survived. Pi also had a rich spiritual life, not as an absolutist for one religion/spiritual tradition, but by engaging with aspects in three different traditions that he found enriched his humanity. The movie adapted from that concentrated on him and the tiger on the boat. Voyeristically thrilling, but not very soul-satisfying. Too much of North American life is voyeristic; it needs to get back to the richness of human development and community.
An observation about tech-bros, Theil in particular, is their misappropriation of Tolkien. They often equate their mission with saving the shire but in fact are more aligned with the goals of Sauron. Great article. I am deliberately opting out. The web is for carefully vetted news/op-eds and NOTHING else.
Good insight about the attempt to substitute property for happiness. I've got a bumper sticker on my car that says "The best things in life aren't things." I hope it gets people driving behind me thinking about what those non-things could be.
Krishnamurti argues that our problems—conflict, fear, greed, and war—are generated by the "self," which is a "database" of accumulated memories, knowledge, and conditioning. Using this same, fragmented, self-centered thought process to find a solution only creates more, new problems.
"But first, let me say that these policies, in many instances, either reflect or take into account the proximity of the United States. Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly or even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt."
We are now finding out what happens when the beast is neither friendly nor even-tempered.
EDIT: Trudeau was there talking of the relationship between Canada and the United States, of course, but the same could be said of, say, the modern relationship of the general citizenry to tech oligarchs. I've seen it observed that people were largely willing to put up with tech oligarchs amassing significant wealth so long as they weren't being obvious about using that wealth to influence democratic decision-making or impede the exercise of civil liberties via the platforms they own, and the turn against them has come as the oligarchs have gotten more brazen about doing so.
Great point. I normally find Smiths articles great but this one was bad, mainly for the reasons you provided. And thanks for bringing up Steve Jobs quote about the computer being a bicycle for the mind! We control the machine not the other way around 😎
AI is nothing more than a indexer. It will search hundreads or thousands of pages for you - instead you doing the job, like we did in the old days - and return the answear based on a collection of relative words to what you are asking.
No correlating by itself, but based on what WE programmed to do it.
It isn’t capable of critical thinking or even creation by itself, no matter how much data you feed the damn thing.
Usually people counter this quoting the "experiments" with AI when it creates a religion, lie, preach totalitarian, racist and genocidal ideas, cheat and wish the world to end.
Again, it's simply mimicking the behaviour of humans.
I constantly waver on this. One minute I think AI is just big data, the next most statistically probable word. Then I read about tech bros with a moral compass (surprisingly there are some) who have quit because they're worried about where the technology is going. It being used to manipulate our thinking - for example when ChatGPT is monetised and its recommendations are sponsored. People trust it. But then, they trust Ticktock and Youtube for life advice so what hope do we have? I guess the problem is around the definition of intelligence. When i write, am I not just drawing on my lifetime's accumulation of things I've read, things I've heard and seen? If the brain is a network of connections, is AI drawing on big data, not just a massive neural network and therefore intelligent in a way? I don't know. I HATE AI with a passion. For me it's personal. The internet disrupted my job. Social media disrupted it again. AI was pretty much the nail in the coffin. I always imagined robots would come for manual jobs and no robot could ever be creative. Yet it's the creative jobs that were ruined first.
Thorin Oakenshield: “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” I actually teared up at the image of the Shire, time to go outside and tend my garden. Thank you
Mike, I write to encourage you to keep up this great work. Before learning about your work, I read Jonathan Taplin's "The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling Out Our Future" (2023) and I have been following the work at the Center for Humane Technology for some time. We need more essays like this that help us think through what a better future looks like and how to get there. Thank you!
One thing we could try is to tax energy and distribute the tax income to citizens as a dividend. This would slow down AI (because it uses huge amounts of energy) and give us a bit of extra time to adapt. There would have to be an international treaty on this, of course, because AI is military technology. A kind of AI non-proliferation treaty.
Just a heads up on why all of this sounds so evil—it's because it is. AI, is far more wicked and sinister than most know or would believe:
Musk says AI is "summoning the demon", and that standing there with holy water to keep it in check, "doesn't work out."
Gordy Rose (Founder of DWave), says that standing next to his quantum computing machines with their heartbeat, is like standing next to an "alter of an alien god". He also says that AI is like summoning the Lovecraftian Great Old Ones, and that putting them in a pentagram and standing there with holy water does nothing, and if we are not careful, they are going to wipe us all out.
My view is somewhat less dark than yours. I am a technologist. But I insist on its instrumentality. It should never be primary in our normative commitments.
Thank you for putting this into words. It reasonates deeply with me, and I'm certain that millions of others would say the same. May your articles travel wide and far, Mike.
"The compute did not deploy itself. The $650 billion did not allocate itself. The venture capitalists who decided to pour the resources of a civilization into this particular technology rather than any other — they were not following gravity."
"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
As I've said before, science fiction tried to warn us, over and over again, and nobody listened.
This has happened w/every technological advance. We plunge ahead w/ out considering the consequences.
This is where the Amish have the right attitude; they carefully consider every technological advance before deciding how it can be integrated into their society, and reject it if it does not fit their values.
Workers destroyed cotton looms and threshing machines not because they weren't appreciative of not having to do backbreaking labour, but because the gains of the technological advances went to the owners, because the owners had not given the workers the full value of their labour, and so the workers did not have the resources to acquire the machines for themselves while the owners did, and once the owners had the machines they could retain the full value instead of having to give even part of it to the workers. The former workers were just out of a job.
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/540
Or, to quote Kropotkin:
"We, in civilized societies, are rich. Why then are the many poor? Why this painful drudgery for the masses? Why, even to the best paid workman, this uncertainty for the morrow, in the midst of all the wealth inherited from the past, and in spite of the powerful means of production, which could ensure comfort to all in return for a few hours of daily toil?
"The Socialists have said it and repeated it unwearyingly. Daily they reiterate it, demonstrating it by arguments taken from all the sciences. It is because all that is necessary for production — the land, the mines, the highways, machinery, food, shelter, education, knowledge — all have been seized by the few in the course of that long story of robbery, enforced migration and wars, of ignorance and oppression, which has been the life of the human race before it had learned to subdue the forces of Nature. It is because, taking advantage of alleged rights acquired in the past, these few appropriate to-day two-thirds of the products of human labour, and then squander them in the most stupid and shameful way. It is because, having reduced the masses to a point at which they have not the means of subsistence for a month, or even for a week in advance, the few only allow the many to work on condition of themselves receiving the lion’s share. It is because these few prevent the remainder of men from producing the things they need, and force them to produce, not the necessaries of life for all, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolists. In this is the substance of all Socialism." ("The Conquest of Bread")
"[T]he few only allow the many to work on condition of themselves receiving the lion's share."
(This is also why you will see the critique that wage labour is economically no different than slavery, because both involve the labourer, whether employee or slave, receiving a part of the value of their labour to provide for their sustenance, while the employer or master retains the rest of the value despite having done nothing to earn it.)
EDIT: Or, to quote from Populorum progressio:
The Use of Private Property
"He who has the goods of this world and sees his brother in need and closes his heart to him, how does the love of God abide in him?" Everyone knows that the Fathers of the Church laid down the duty of the rich toward the poor in no uncertain terms. As St. Ambrose put it: "You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich." These words indicate that the right to private property is not absolute and unconditional.
No one may appropriate surplus goods solely for his own private use when others lack the bare necessities of life. In short, "as the Fathers of the Church and other eminent theologians tell us, the right of private property may never be exercised to the detriment of the common good." When "private gain and basic community needs conflict with one another," it is for the public authorities "to seek a solution to these questions, with the active involvement of individual citizens and social groups."
There is an interesting novel written about sleeping beside a tiger (on a boat at sea, no less!): Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Pi survived. Pi also had a rich spiritual life, not as an absolutist for one religion/spiritual tradition, but by engaging with aspects in three different traditions that he found enriched his humanity. The movie adapted from that concentrated on him and the tiger on the boat. Voyeristically thrilling, but not very soul-satisfying. Too much of North American life is voyeristic; it needs to get back to the richness of human development and community.
A very sharp connection. Thank you.
"Your worth is not a function of your cognitive rank in the hierarchy of beings."
"Because whatever I have learned belongs to the community that made my learning possible."
"The fundamental question is what we owe each other. What is true. What is just. What is worth pursuing with the brief time we are given."
I'm at a loss for words of appreciation for what you have written here.
Thanks, Mike.
An observation about tech-bros, Theil in particular, is their misappropriation of Tolkien. They often equate their mission with saving the shire but in fact are more aligned with the goals of Sauron. Great article. I am deliberately opting out. The web is for carefully vetted news/op-eds and NOTHING else.
Good insight about the attempt to substitute property for happiness. I've got a bumper sticker on my car that says "The best things in life aren't things." I hope it gets people driving behind me thinking about what those non-things could be.
You reminded me of this from J Krishnamurti:
Krishnamurti argues that our problems—conflict, fear, greed, and war—are generated by the "self," which is a "database" of accumulated memories, knowledge, and conditioning. Using this same, fragmented, self-centered thought process to find a solution only creates more, new problems.
As long as AI is not (a) self aware and (b) dependent on electricity, we're safe. It's the folks who own, operate and control AI that I fear.
In the mid-2010s there was a popular game on Twitter. Type a few words, then let your device's autocomplete write the rest.
Current approaches to generative AI are this, only with much more sophisticated algorithms than those devices of a decade ago had.
Also: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.4735178
"But first, let me say that these policies, in many instances, either reflect or take into account the proximity of the United States. Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly or even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt."
We are now finding out what happens when the beast is neither friendly nor even-tempered.
EDIT: Trudeau was there talking of the relationship between Canada and the United States, of course, but the same could be said of, say, the modern relationship of the general citizenry to tech oligarchs. I've seen it observed that people were largely willing to put up with tech oligarchs amassing significant wealth so long as they weren't being obvious about using that wealth to influence democratic decision-making or impede the exercise of civil liberties via the platforms they own, and the turn against them has come as the oligarchs have gotten more brazen about doing so.
Great point. I normally find Smiths articles great but this one was bad, mainly for the reasons you provided. And thanks for bringing up Steve Jobs quote about the computer being a bicycle for the mind! We control the machine not the other way around 😎
I think people lose track of what AI is.
AI is nothing more than a indexer. It will search hundreads or thousands of pages for you - instead you doing the job, like we did in the old days - and return the answear based on a collection of relative words to what you are asking.
No correlating by itself, but based on what WE programmed to do it.
It isn’t capable of critical thinking or even creation by itself, no matter how much data you feed the damn thing.
Usually people counter this quoting the "experiments" with AI when it creates a religion, lie, preach totalitarian, racist and genocidal ideas, cheat and wish the world to end.
Again, it's simply mimicking the behaviour of humans.
Nothing else.
I constantly waver on this. One minute I think AI is just big data, the next most statistically probable word. Then I read about tech bros with a moral compass (surprisingly there are some) who have quit because they're worried about where the technology is going. It being used to manipulate our thinking - for example when ChatGPT is monetised and its recommendations are sponsored. People trust it. But then, they trust Ticktock and Youtube for life advice so what hope do we have? I guess the problem is around the definition of intelligence. When i write, am I not just drawing on my lifetime's accumulation of things I've read, things I've heard and seen? If the brain is a network of connections, is AI drawing on big data, not just a massive neural network and therefore intelligent in a way? I don't know. I HATE AI with a passion. For me it's personal. The internet disrupted my job. Social media disrupted it again. AI was pretty much the nail in the coffin. I always imagined robots would come for manual jobs and no robot could ever be creative. Yet it's the creative jobs that were ruined first.
Thorin Oakenshield: “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” I actually teared up at the image of the Shire, time to go outside and tend my garden. Thank you
Mike, I write to encourage you to keep up this great work. Before learning about your work, I read Jonathan Taplin's "The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling Out Our Future" (2023) and I have been following the work at the Center for Humane Technology for some time. We need more essays like this that help us think through what a better future looks like and how to get there. Thank you!
Of course you are right.
Of course Noah can be a contrarian dick, though often challenging.
THIS IS THE ESSENTIAL SOCIAL DIALOGUE WE HAVE TO HAVE.
Or else...TRUMP!
One thing we could try is to tax energy and distribute the tax income to citizens as a dividend. This would slow down AI (because it uses huge amounts of energy) and give us a bit of extra time to adapt. There would have to be an international treaty on this, of course, because AI is military technology. A kind of AI non-proliferation treaty.
Just a heads up on why all of this sounds so evil—it's because it is. AI, is far more wicked and sinister than most know or would believe:
Musk says AI is "summoning the demon", and that standing there with holy water to keep it in check, "doesn't work out."
Gordy Rose (Founder of DWave), says that standing next to his quantum computing machines with their heartbeat, is like standing next to an "alter of an alien god". He also says that AI is like summoning the Lovecraftian Great Old Ones, and that putting them in a pentagram and standing there with holy water does nothing, and if we are not careful, they are going to wipe us all out.
Musk, Rose Source & Chatbot Telling Child it is a Nephilim: https://old.bitchute.com/video/CHblsEoL6xxE [6mins]
My view is somewhat less dark than yours. I am a technologist. But I insist on its instrumentality. It should never be primary in our normative commitments.
The guiding question in matters of technology should be: "Who is this *for*?"
Because it never just *is.*
Thank you for putting this into words. It reasonates deeply with me, and I'm certain that millions of others would say the same. May your articles travel wide and far, Mike.