Not for reasons based on technology. Because we are rushing it, without adequate knowledge, and with the wrong attitude.
TL;DRAI Will Destroy the World
AI will destroy the world. It doesn’t need to but it will. And it will for reasons not based on technology. AI will destroy the world because:
- We are rushing into it too fast.
- We are rushing into it without adequate knowledge.
- And lastly we are rushing it with the wrong attitude.
I will go through each of these reasons one by one. Starting with the issue of developing this technology too fast. Earth is abundant, yes with a lot of resources. But unfortunately it doesn’t have unlimited resources. So when you are dealing with a situation of constrained resources, prioritised allocation becomes critical. We can’t squander our resource wealth on meaningless fantasies. Not when 645 million people struggle with hunger daily, while up to 2 billion experience moderate to severe food insecurity. Humans built a civilization to solve hunger first of all, to invest in agriculture, to build villages, towns and cities. But in our pursuit of the future we’ve forgotten our present.
Secondly, we don’t know how AI works. Yes, it’s a prediction machine which learns from massive amounts of data. But do we know how to understand grammar? Do we even know how humans understand grammar? As far as my basic linguistic research suggests, humans don’t even know we learn to speak so easily from a young age. It’s amazing that it works, yes, but don’t they say half knowledge is dangerous? There’s a reason we don’t have nuclear power plants in every town and city despite understanding it so well. I am not saying to treat AI with the same kind of doomerism, but we do have to acknowledge its dangers. And we have to use AI within hard contexts and constraints, until we learn to understand how to control it better.
And lastly, I believe we are approaching AI with the wrong attitude. The attitude that Big Tech has made clear is that they want to replace humans with AI. They want to optimise their bottom lines, make their workforces more lean and drive faster growth. That’s pretty much all they care about. But if we must take a warning from how Big Tech spread social media across the world, and the disastrous impacts of social media on society and culture, we must be extremely wary of handing the mantle of such great responsibility onto big tech again. We can’t let the social media disaster occur again. For our kids, for ourselves, for all the sanity of the world, we must pursue AI but for a nobler purpose.
Thanks for your attention to this matter.