Thank you for your writing. We need more people who aren’t only motivated by money. Money is important but for sure isn’t and shouldn’t be everything. Thank you for walking the talk.
Greetings from India , Erik . I just found Substack a month or so ago and if there is one writer I have read the most , it’s you . Your thoughts on whatever topic you write on add so much value to my understanding of it . I will do my bit if it helps you to just concentrate on continuing work you are doing .
That's a great question, and I've taken some heat from Christian friends and colleagues who no longer seem to view it as a march into mechanism but just "cool tech." I don't have an easy answer, other than the culture is for easy answers generally.
This is where I think that emphasizing its present and future harms is essential: disempowerment in particular, which you have mentioned with centralization.
I feel that God may not wish us to put our future in the hands of childless atheists who envision our extinction as progress.
I agree. This stuff can't happen. It's endlessly perplexing to me because I studied mathematical logic (undergirding all of computation), and it's simply fast arithmetic. Why people wanted to make it a new religion has been, and forever will be, a mystery to me. I try to combat it wherever I can.
I think it's inherently difficult to demarcate "good and bad" tech, as we've been tool making since Jesus offered wine in wine skins, and wore sandals. It's hard for even smart and well-meaning and informed people to say "STOP HERE!" The secret about AI, even in spite of the latest foundational models like GPT-X, is simply that's it's not really smart. We have calculators, and they add and multiply integers much faster and more accurately than we as humans ever could. Is that smart? Is spitting out Wikipedia knowledge using the electricity that could power cities in Africa "smart"? I don't think so. But it does get more sophisticated, so in a sense we're deciding what we want and when we want to say "nah, no thanks." Very, very difficult questions.
I don't know how to say this exactly, I apologize. There's no real way to "stop" technology, but (to take a really stupid example) really efficient crack pipes don't tempt most people to do crack. So we have to constantly, constantly, keep asking questions about what world we want. I'm really sorry I can't be more exact, it's just such a big and difficult question!
No, you just repackage the drugs as "medicinal" while vastly increasing their addictiveness potential: variations of this can be done by marketers of all times, and I think you mentioned too, by social media.
By exporting negative externalities, the "crack sellers" nonetheless can very successfully destroy us. A large reason it hasnt is that socially, "using crack" is personally negative and socially frowned on. Will that be the case with AI?
I actually think there is a fairly easy demarcation point but its all about the application and extent that is the tricky part.
And that is, "Technology that augments humans is good, but not technology that flatly replaces humans."
Calculators, etc are all fairly brittle and require humans as part of "their" mode of operation. If you flexibly try to think of calculators as life, they need humans to exist, and to procreate(build more of them). Thus, "humans are the genitals of technology."
But this isn't the case once we have technology that increasingly covers all use cases and does not need us; you see rapid advances in both robotics and AI, and I don't even know if "smart" matters as much as, "is capable of eliminating humans from all valuable roles and eventually self-replicate?"
Once you get there, humans no longer are needed and like horses, increasingly slated for extinction.
So I do think that a lot of "nuance" isnt so much there, as much as we can't resist the Ring in a Tolkienesque way that we feel the need to justify.
I don't know the exact point of uselessness and powerlessness we want to render unto ourselves, but we should be having these discussions now and we should ask if this God's desire for us now, before it is too late.
But Sean, and I'm not trying to argue with you, honestly, what replaces us? That line gets fuzzy. Do cars replace human foot runners? etc. I'm not being coy here and I agree with your general principle about augment versus replace, but is that really clear cut? It's certainly on the right track, by my lights. But my point is sometimes we actually want something to replace. Cars don't "augment" human foot speed, they replace it with wheels. Et cetera. But again I agree with this general distinction between augment and replace.
Do cars replace human foot runners? Absolutely. Probably horses already have: though in the past it always was with caveats, horses make more noise and are a large investment. It all involved humans, too. Humans to train horses, humans to build cars.
We can even look into the classic example of mass manufacturing replacing craftsmen: humans were needed to run the factories.
But AI promises no exception for organic activity at all, no "humans are better at this corner", no "this technology is too expensive for total replacement. "We can laugh about its errors now, but it feels increasingly hubrisic. I am not comfortable making those assumptions anymore.
I'm not trying to argue either, just explain. You even see people like Noah Smith blithely discuss "comparative advantage" of humans to clawing for anything that humans might have comparative advantage in. You have people like Ethan Mollins, AI booster, asking for "people to not murder us all."
And that, along with catastrophic disempowerment, is just not something we recover from. If we are going into that world, we need to scream it from the roof tops, as Zvi often says.
I think you're right to read into some of this bad spiritual ideas. It's not just technology, it's the idea that some folks want to "move past" human beings. And people like us who push back are often seen as slowing progress. But these are just BAD IDEAS. And they're anti-human ideas. Pushing back is getting us back on track.
I could be wrong, but I have always found the sci-fi future of AI to be exactly that, fiction. There is no doubt technology will continue to disrupt industries and replace humans in some/many tasks. But the U.N. predicts advanced economies are facing labor shortages by 2050. (https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4047115?v=pdf) Explains why the U.N. is promoting the historic migrations into Europe and the U.S.
In my own field, the computer with word processors and spreadsheets has made me incredibly more efficient. It used to take hours with my HP12C in one hand and a pencil in the other with a yellow pad at my elbow. My secretary would type it, using lots of whiteout. Today I can generate the same report in seconds and print it out in a minute. However, because of that gain in efficiency, my workload is much heavier and my secretary has been replaced by eight other team members to keep up with changes in client service (everyone wants everything yesterday), technology, compliance, IT security, along with all of the voluminous research to stay current with new developments in the industry. As we adapt AI, the only thing I am certain of is that my workload will get heavier, not lighter, and our clients will become even more demanding.
Right on Alan, I think it's important to point out that "labor saving" somehow magically means everyone has more labor. Honestly, I'll express frustration here, how do we SAY IT CLEARLY?!!!!! We need a really powerful philosophy of technology.
One sort of low hanging fruit point here is that "AI" is always repackaging human cultural production. Don't expect AI to innovate, it retroactively delivers information in a format that can, admittedly, be helpful to humans. But it's not mindful, and that's why it's more like the Model-T than the futurists' perpetually silly and dangerous vision of our future.
But that is the challenge of normalcy bias - just because it was true in the past doesn't mean it isn't in the future. As the joke goes, "I am immortal, and I know that because I have never died."
The main distinction is that all prior technologies required humans: the new ones exist to replace all human effort.
You don't have to believe me, just keep an eye on technology and be aware that "more is not always better." E.g. more food is good for us until it is not, more vitamins are good for us until it is not, and so on.
Put me in the Matthew Crawford camp. I don't like how the conveniences of technology has diminished my skills. I only use my HP12C (on my phone!) for quick arithmetic. Would need to pull out the user's manual buried in a desk drawer on calculating standard deviations. I'm totally divorced from my food source, so I've planted a modest vegetable garden. I don't want a self-driving car, an electric stove or to wave my hand under a faucet to get a 3-second splash of lukewarm water.
Since 2020, my tongue-in-cheek snarky solution for solving the censorship issue is to bomb all the data centers. To my amusement, "New Polity Magazine" is hosting their annual conference this coming week and the topic is, "Should We, Therefore, Destroy the Servers?" I have found great solace in "The Serenity Prayer" and reading and re-reading Bernanos' "Final Essays." Finally, I have tremendous gratitude that God has placed me in this world at this time of upheaval. Many saints will be made.
Erik, did you consider introducing some kind of “plus” tier, or called “vip” or whatever, which would be for more money for supporters who are willing to pay more? I’ve seen those in the past (though not yet on Substack)
I would be more than happy to pay for this higher tier!
Thank you for your writing. We need more people who aren’t only motivated by money. Money is important but for sure isn’t and shouldn’t be everything. Thank you for walking the talk.
You're really great, Jana! You've been here since the start and I have all respect for you! Thank you.
Greetings from India , Erik . I just found Substack a month or so ago and if there is one writer I have read the most , it’s you . Your thoughts on whatever topic you write on add so much value to my understanding of it . I will do my bit if it helps you to just concentrate on continuing work you are doing .
Hi Tarun,
Wow, what a great compliment! Much appreciated, and thank you for your support. Let's hope we can keep getting useful and important messages out.
I've been supportive since the beginning though I remain terrified by AI, but the fact that you are in the side of humanity, is pretty valuable.
Why do you think that the larger Christian scene remains so impassive to the risks and implications?
I still see a lot of dismissal.
That's a great question, and I've taken some heat from Christian friends and colleagues who no longer seem to view it as a march into mechanism but just "cool tech." I don't have an easy answer, other than the culture is for easy answers generally.
This is where I think that emphasizing its present and future harms is essential: disempowerment in particular, which you have mentioned with centralization.
I feel that God may not wish us to put our future in the hands of childless atheists who envision our extinction as progress.
https://quillette.com/2023/08/06/ais-will-be-our-mind-children/
I agree. This stuff can't happen. It's endlessly perplexing to me because I studied mathematical logic (undergirding all of computation), and it's simply fast arithmetic. Why people wanted to make it a new religion has been, and forever will be, a mystery to me. I try to combat it wherever I can.
I think it's inherently difficult to demarcate "good and bad" tech, as we've been tool making since Jesus offered wine in wine skins, and wore sandals. It's hard for even smart and well-meaning and informed people to say "STOP HERE!" The secret about AI, even in spite of the latest foundational models like GPT-X, is simply that's it's not really smart. We have calculators, and they add and multiply integers much faster and more accurately than we as humans ever could. Is that smart? Is spitting out Wikipedia knowledge using the electricity that could power cities in Africa "smart"? I don't think so. But it does get more sophisticated, so in a sense we're deciding what we want and when we want to say "nah, no thanks." Very, very difficult questions.
I don't know how to say this exactly, I apologize. There's no real way to "stop" technology, but (to take a really stupid example) really efficient crack pipes don't tempt most people to do crack. So we have to constantly, constantly, keep asking questions about what world we want. I'm really sorry I can't be more exact, it's just such a big and difficult question!
No, you just repackage the drugs as "medicinal" while vastly increasing their addictiveness potential: variations of this can be done by marketers of all times, and I think you mentioned too, by social media.
By exporting negative externalities, the "crack sellers" nonetheless can very successfully destroy us. A large reason it hasnt is that socially, "using crack" is personally negative and socially frowned on. Will that be the case with AI?
I actually think there is a fairly easy demarcation point but its all about the application and extent that is the tricky part.
And that is, "Technology that augments humans is good, but not technology that flatly replaces humans."
Calculators, etc are all fairly brittle and require humans as part of "their" mode of operation. If you flexibly try to think of calculators as life, they need humans to exist, and to procreate(build more of them). Thus, "humans are the genitals of technology."
But this isn't the case once we have technology that increasingly covers all use cases and does not need us; you see rapid advances in both robotics and AI, and I don't even know if "smart" matters as much as, "is capable of eliminating humans from all valuable roles and eventually self-replicate?"
Once you get there, humans no longer are needed and like horses, increasingly slated for extinction.
So I do think that a lot of "nuance" isnt so much there, as much as we can't resist the Ring in a Tolkienesque way that we feel the need to justify.
I don't know the exact point of uselessness and powerlessness we want to render unto ourselves, but we should be having these discussions now and we should ask if this God's desire for us now, before it is too late.
But Sean, and I'm not trying to argue with you, honestly, what replaces us? That line gets fuzzy. Do cars replace human foot runners? etc. I'm not being coy here and I agree with your general principle about augment versus replace, but is that really clear cut? It's certainly on the right track, by my lights. But my point is sometimes we actually want something to replace. Cars don't "augment" human foot speed, they replace it with wheels. Et cetera. But again I agree with this general distinction between augment and replace.
Do cars replace human foot runners? Absolutely. Probably horses already have: though in the past it always was with caveats, horses make more noise and are a large investment. It all involved humans, too. Humans to train horses, humans to build cars.
We can even look into the classic example of mass manufacturing replacing craftsmen: humans were needed to run the factories.
But AI promises no exception for organic activity at all, no "humans are better at this corner", no "this technology is too expensive for total replacement. "We can laugh about its errors now, but it feels increasingly hubrisic. I am not comfortable making those assumptions anymore.
I'm not trying to argue either, just explain. You even see people like Noah Smith blithely discuss "comparative advantage" of humans to clawing for anything that humans might have comparative advantage in. You have people like Ethan Mollins, AI booster, asking for "people to not murder us all."
And that, along with catastrophic disempowerment, is just not something we recover from. If we are going into that world, we need to scream it from the roof tops, as Zvi often says.
So here I am, screaming as it might be.
I think you're right to read into some of this bad spiritual ideas. It's not just technology, it's the idea that some folks want to "move past" human beings. And people like us who push back are often seen as slowing progress. But these are just BAD IDEAS. And they're anti-human ideas. Pushing back is getting us back on track.
I could be wrong, but I have always found the sci-fi future of AI to be exactly that, fiction. There is no doubt technology will continue to disrupt industries and replace humans in some/many tasks. But the U.N. predicts advanced economies are facing labor shortages by 2050. (https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4047115?v=pdf) Explains why the U.N. is promoting the historic migrations into Europe and the U.S.
In my own field, the computer with word processors and spreadsheets has made me incredibly more efficient. It used to take hours with my HP12C in one hand and a pencil in the other with a yellow pad at my elbow. My secretary would type it, using lots of whiteout. Today I can generate the same report in seconds and print it out in a minute. However, because of that gain in efficiency, my workload is much heavier and my secretary has been replaced by eight other team members to keep up with changes in client service (everyone wants everything yesterday), technology, compliance, IT security, along with all of the voluminous research to stay current with new developments in the industry. As we adapt AI, the only thing I am certain of is that my workload will get heavier, not lighter, and our clients will become even more demanding.
Right on Alan, I think it's important to point out that "labor saving" somehow magically means everyone has more labor. Honestly, I'll express frustration here, how do we SAY IT CLEARLY?!!!!! We need a really powerful philosophy of technology.
Another way to ask this is..
"What do you expect AI not be able to do?"
And see if you can answer anything at all. If it is, "stuff will happen and it will be fine", then well, hope is not a plan.
One sort of low hanging fruit point here is that "AI" is always repackaging human cultural production. Don't expect AI to innovate, it retroactively delivers information in a format that can, admittedly, be helpful to humans. But it's not mindful, and that's why it's more like the Model-T than the futurists' perpetually silly and dangerous vision of our future.
But that is the challenge of normalcy bias - just because it was true in the past doesn't mean it isn't in the future. As the joke goes, "I am immortal, and I know that because I have never died."
The main distinction is that all prior technologies required humans: the new ones exist to replace all human effort.
You don't have to believe me, just keep an eye on technology and be aware that "more is not always better." E.g. more food is good for us until it is not, more vitamins are good for us until it is not, and so on.
Put me in the Matthew Crawford camp. I don't like how the conveniences of technology has diminished my skills. I only use my HP12C (on my phone!) for quick arithmetic. Would need to pull out the user's manual buried in a desk drawer on calculating standard deviations. I'm totally divorced from my food source, so I've planted a modest vegetable garden. I don't want a self-driving car, an electric stove or to wave my hand under a faucet to get a 3-second splash of lukewarm water.
Since 2020, my tongue-in-cheek snarky solution for solving the censorship issue is to bomb all the data centers. To my amusement, "New Polity Magazine" is hosting their annual conference this coming week and the topic is, "Should We, Therefore, Destroy the Servers?" I have found great solace in "The Serenity Prayer" and reading and re-reading Bernanos' "Final Essays." Finally, I have tremendous gratitude that God has placed me in this world at this time of upheaval. Many saints will be made.
Subscribed!
Erik, did you consider introducing some kind of “plus” tier, or called “vip” or whatever, which would be for more money for supporters who are willing to pay more? I’ve seen those in the past (though not yet on Substack)
I would be more than happy to pay for this higher tier!