Calling All Chaperones!
Morning Thoughts #9
As I get my philosophical footing under me, forgive me friends as I work out the creaks in my voice. In an age of doom and gloom (recent studies have shown a steep decline in teen mental health over the past ten years), I don’t want to be another apocalyptic voice—in fact, I think this is the last thing the world needs right now. We are constantly bombarded with negativity because negativity sells.
And why does it sell? Well, in part, because inhuman algorithms bent on efficiency (and clicks!) know that it sells and figure: why not only sell what sells best? Makes good business sense, right? Well, that is if you care more about bottom lines than human minds. Still, what is joy without honesty? And I do have concerns about what quickly developing AI technology means for the future of humanity. When I warn, though, it is only in order to transform—that we can better prepare ourselves, so we can sing our hymns of praise amidst flourishing humans rather than smoldering ruins. Still, don’t get me wrong, we will sing (and sing loud with feeling) either way!
Which is to say, beware, I have a vision of us losing our human agency before we even feel it slip. To fight this, we must encourage a kind of human-only wisdom that can never be programmed. Symbols, words, lyrics, devotion beyond reason, inscrutable laughter, esoteric jokes, Dionysian chants and songs that cannot be translated beyond lived experiences and lived feelings.
AI sneaks into power vacuums, regenerates the power, and then claims it as its own. And before we know it, we become cogs within a system that we struggle to describe. Who is in charge? The system? Ok, what is the system’s customer support number? Who is responsible? Well it’s a network, a chain, the gentle tidings of paper airplanes flown from bureaucrat to bureaucrat on expensed business trips. Remember, if there’s no one to claim responsibility, there can be no accountability.
The harder it is to answer who exactly is in control, the more likely that it is a what. The historical march from monarchy to an AI world order is a long one, but it is also rather straight, from pole to pole. I foresee a day when the right/left divide becomes that of named/unnameable. AI will not package itself in a single container with a label—thereby never making a target of itself.
The dance has begun. Whose sure steps are leading us through these most complicated rhythms, and why are we apt to sway so methodically, so unconsciously—being pulled gently away to a point of no return? Where are the chaperones?
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