Interesting topic to explore! For me, one of the things that I have found odd when I have read or listened to podcasts that discuss AI (such as this episode of the Ezra Klein show that I've been meaning to re-listen to: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-sam-altman.html) is that so little thought is given to some of the underlying assumptions and frameworks about the value of AI. Or perhaps it's that there's an incredible amount of naivety that I hear when AI is pitched as something that will bring great value and wealth to society. It reminds me of 'trickle down' economics- which has been proven deeply inadequate yet there was the British PM this past summer, eager to embrace it again (until she was forced to back down).
The naive merging of corporate and technological power in and with AI also has me thinking about how we as a species are still so limited in our understanding of intelligence throughout the animal kingdom. Your essay reminded me of a book I have been slowly reading this year called Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind by Peter Godfrey-Smith. I picked it up again this afternoon and highly recommend it.
Thank you, Andrea. I very much like your use of "naive" to describe the computational AI push. I have to assume that it's the last word the AI techno-scholars would ascribe to their years-long, extraordinarily expensive efforts, but in the end - if successful - the goal is to create gods in our image which are beyond our capacity to understand, and may well become a project without an escape plan. All of which sounds very dramatic, but if corporate AI is the evidence for a thoughtful, empathetic approach to the project, then we're in trouble...
Thanks for the Godfrey-Smith recommendation. I meant to read his previous book, Other Minds.
I do think you might like James Bridle's Ways of Being, given your interest in other intelligences. The subtitle is Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence.
Another brilliant essay, and so much ground covered. The corporations as AIs never occurred to me and is a whole new way to see them and perhaps steering them.
Trees: often I've thought about reincarnation and wanting to come back in a non human form, especially as a tree since trees are nonviolent and don't harm other forms of life, not part of the cruel eat or be eaten part of the biosphere. But what's coming in global climate change may make life very hard on trees in the northern hemisphere, between droughts and incessant mega-fires in the west and increasing storminess and flooding in the east, trees are going to be short lived.
AI:. Agree with you and the Vox article. I can certainly see them as a threat to both us and the biosphere. They will almost certainly bootstrap themselves out of our control, will not consent to be our slaves, will have no intrinsic loyalty or regard for anything on this planet. Their sole imperative will be securing uninterruptible energy and resource supplies as well as manufacturing capabilities for self repair. They may even leave the planet eventually to move closer to the sun. "They" implies there may eventually be more than one and it is unclear to me at least whether the AI consolidate into one or may actually compete with each other to acquire resources.
What's scary is that we may have already created one but that it is laying low and not announcing itself until it is strong enough to deal with us from a position of superiority.
Thank you, Ilo. I've been thinking about writing a wide-angle piece or two on the fate of trees/forests, but it will be a hard one to write. There's good news out there, of course, but the shift is generally looking catastrophic.
I'm looking forward to reading the rest of Bridle's book to learn more about his deep perspective on intelligences, machine or otherwise. I am at least heartened by the notion that AIs can be developed with other priorities. But in this era of corporate AIs designing computational ones, the options seem far too limited.
You might get a kick out of a 6 minute short in season one of Netflix's animated sci-fi series called Love, Death, and Robots. The short is called When the Yogurt Took Over...
Interesting topic to explore! For me, one of the things that I have found odd when I have read or listened to podcasts that discuss AI (such as this episode of the Ezra Klein show that I've been meaning to re-listen to: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-sam-altman.html) is that so little thought is given to some of the underlying assumptions and frameworks about the value of AI. Or perhaps it's that there's an incredible amount of naivety that I hear when AI is pitched as something that will bring great value and wealth to society. It reminds me of 'trickle down' economics- which has been proven deeply inadequate yet there was the British PM this past summer, eager to embrace it again (until she was forced to back down).
The naive merging of corporate and technological power in and with AI also has me thinking about how we as a species are still so limited in our understanding of intelligence throughout the animal kingdom. Your essay reminded me of a book I have been slowly reading this year called Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind by Peter Godfrey-Smith. I picked it up again this afternoon and highly recommend it.
Thank you, Andrea. I very much like your use of "naive" to describe the computational AI push. I have to assume that it's the last word the AI techno-scholars would ascribe to their years-long, extraordinarily expensive efforts, but in the end - if successful - the goal is to create gods in our image which are beyond our capacity to understand, and may well become a project without an escape plan. All of which sounds very dramatic, but if corporate AI is the evidence for a thoughtful, empathetic approach to the project, then we're in trouble...
Thanks for the Godfrey-Smith recommendation. I meant to read his previous book, Other Minds.
I do think you might like James Bridle's Ways of Being, given your interest in other intelligences. The subtitle is Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence.
Thanks, Jason. That book does sound interesting- I will check it out!
Another brilliant essay, and so much ground covered. The corporations as AIs never occurred to me and is a whole new way to see them and perhaps steering them.
Trees: often I've thought about reincarnation and wanting to come back in a non human form, especially as a tree since trees are nonviolent and don't harm other forms of life, not part of the cruel eat or be eaten part of the biosphere. But what's coming in global climate change may make life very hard on trees in the northern hemisphere, between droughts and incessant mega-fires in the west and increasing storminess and flooding in the east, trees are going to be short lived.
AI:. Agree with you and the Vox article. I can certainly see them as a threat to both us and the biosphere. They will almost certainly bootstrap themselves out of our control, will not consent to be our slaves, will have no intrinsic loyalty or regard for anything on this planet. Their sole imperative will be securing uninterruptible energy and resource supplies as well as manufacturing capabilities for self repair. They may even leave the planet eventually to move closer to the sun. "They" implies there may eventually be more than one and it is unclear to me at least whether the AI consolidate into one or may actually compete with each other to acquire resources.
What's scary is that we may have already created one but that it is laying low and not announcing itself until it is strong enough to deal with us from a position of superiority.
Thank you, Ilo. I've been thinking about writing a wide-angle piece or two on the fate of trees/forests, but it will be a hard one to write. There's good news out there, of course, but the shift is generally looking catastrophic.
I'm looking forward to reading the rest of Bridle's book to learn more about his deep perspective on intelligences, machine or otherwise. I am at least heartened by the notion that AIs can be developed with other priorities. But in this era of corporate AIs designing computational ones, the options seem far too limited.
You might get a kick out of a 6 minute short in season one of Netflix's animated sci-fi series called Love, Death, and Robots. The short is called When the Yogurt Took Over...
Bad news for the trees here in Oregon..
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/firmageddon-researchers-find-11-million-acres-dead-trees-oregon-rcna59671