In the classical music world, new works used to get REACTIONS. Premieres of new works would get booed pretty often. Sometimes they’d go on to be regarded as masterpieces, sometimes they’d be utterly forgotten. Nowadays, it’s all polite applause, and it’s all forgotten.
We need more boring, too. We've become a society where everything has to be mind blowing, exciting, never before seen, incredible and instantaneous 100% of the time.
People of influence and authority could not care less whether AI or any other tech is liked or popular. They care about whether the tech will bring them power and money.
That's it. Power and money. Sycophants can always be bought.
Yes, the voice of the people seems to hardly matter now, across the board. It's disappeared, along with "the customer is always right" and "elected officials serve the public." Still, all we need to do is use cash rather than cards for purchases. That tactic alone will demonstrate the power of individuals over megalith structures like Big Tech, Big Brother and Big Pharma. Catherine Austin Fitts talks about this all the time.
Recently I read an "overheard in NYC" exchange. Customer asked the cashier if they accepted Apple Pay or some other electronic form of payment. The cashier replied that they only accepted cash. The customer asked "How does that work?" The cashier replied "You hand it to me".
Took my wedding certificate in person to “Human resources “. Wanted to add my new wife to my insurance. I was turned away and told to “upload” it. Not something I know how to do. Seems crazy to not be able to accomplish this in person.
Sure. If you have the wherewithal. Folks who do not have phones, or credit cards, or bank accounts, deal in cash. Businesses that refuse cash are deserving of closure til they grow some sense. It is illegal to refuse cash in San Francisco, home of tech, because the City has common decency. There are stores in the city I live in now that will not take cash. I refuse to shop there.
Yes, though I'm reluctant to instruct small businesses how to operate knowing how tough it is for them to survive. Also, the cohort you describe is exceedingly small. As a longstanding volunteer for a local charity I have received thousands of requests for help. Almost all come through mobile phones requesting Venmo attached to a bank debit card. But yes, the homeless population tends to be cash only. Due to mental illness and substance abuse (sometimes the latter is self-medicating the former), they often refuse the debit cards we offer them.
Bern wrote "There are stores in the city I live in now that will not take cash. I refuse to shop there."
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But those stores are still open and in business? That would mean that the loss of your business has not had any impact on them, yes?
The truth is that we need less focus on accommodating to the lowest common denominator, of hamstringing everyone else because some relatively few people are unable or choose not to move in sync with their societies.
I do not care if my choice has any impact on such operations. No perfect business. No perfect customer.
Perhaps your interactions with poor people are fewer than mine. Just because people are not sheltering in doorways does not mean they have adequate access to food, or a cup of coffee, or a bank account. Many people still rely on the cash economy that worked for them for much of their lives, but doesn't so much anymore.
No one is hamstrung when cash is accepted. Maybe the closing clerk is obligated to do a little extra work to wrangle the loose change at the end of business – possibly offset by no need to pay the credit card fee.
It's easy to say one individual's decision might not have any impact, as if that justifies people not making decisions as a matter of conscience. But impact does occur, as more people are engaged, what if Rosa Parks had simply moved to the back of the bus, cause hey, one person's action won't end segregation anyway?
"Electronic payments" or credit cards? They are not the same. I've had a credit card since I was in high school. My Dad had me get one because he said paying the bill on time would build my credit. He was right.
My wife and I don't use so-called "smart" phones, so electronic payments mean nothing to us. And I've never found that not using tech has made my life more difficult. On the contrary, it has made my life much less complicated, unlike having to jump through hoops just to log into financial and medical accounts, as well as logging on to my (very small) company's VPN.
As a registered architect I sometimes long for a return to the drafting board. It required actual skill to produce quality construction documents, and observing how recent architectural school graduates have such little understanding of actually constructing a building, it is reasonable to determine that much is lost between the keyboard, mouse, computer and what happens when drawings are plotted (printed on large format).
Also, I'll note that, should one of our country's strategic adversaries detonate an EMP warhead over the US, I'll still be able to start and drive my old Porsche. But I most likely will have to open the garage door manually...
Unfortunately governments are promoting contactless payments (it's yet another surveillance tool for them) and an increasing number of businesses won't accept cash anymore. I feel particularly sorry for the homeless beggars as fewer and fewer people even carry cash. The best I can do for them is to offer to buy them something. There's no doubt that contactless payments are handy and not having to carry cash makes us less vulnerable to muggings, although there's still the danger that you'll be forced to an ATM.
As for the social media companies, I've been warning people of the dangers of handing over your days to them for nearly a decade. They have far too much power and influence and all that in the hands of a very few unaccountable companies, unless you consider their accountability to their shareholders. That's not something that gives me any confidence. My preferred search engine is DuckDuckGo, which doesn't not retain your search history or sell it to third parties. My preferred messaging app is Signal which collects the minimum amount of data necessary to provide their service (name and phone number – it was founded by Brian Acton, one of the original founders of WhatsApp when he resigned from the Meta board in disgust at all the promises regarding privacy that Zuckerberg had broken). I too witnessed the advent of the world wide web – I was in the second year of my degree in Computer Science & Discrete Mathematics at the time – and was singing the internet's praises as a tool for the democratisation of knowledge. Then the commercialisation started; remember the dot com bubble? I still think the internet is a good thing, if not for anything else then for Wikipedia. For all its faults, which are wildly exaggerated – the social media companies and governments don't like us having all that knowledge at our fingertips so do their best to disparage it. But it's easy enough to correct any inaccuracies. I've personally edited some minor errors where I have the knowledge and there are a handful of stalwarts who do their best to ensure that it is as accurate as possible. I happen to add I have no personal investment apart from the occasional donations I make. To me it's one of the wonders of the modern world.
There are still good guys around, people whose overriding principle is to create something useful, rather than to monetize everything to the greatest degree possible. In my opinion the best we can do is support them and abandon companies like Meta, Google and Amazon. Hit them where it hurts, in their pockets. Unfortunately my warnings have mostly fallen on deaf ears. However, if enough of us switched to apps like Signal or Telegram the others would soon notice. A few years ago, when WhatsApp announced changes to it's Ts & Cs and wanted to integrate WhatsApp into Facebook as well as claim ownership and copyright for anything you publish on their sites, there was a large enough backlash that Meta abandoned the idea. Both Telegram's and Signal's websites crashed under the sheer weight of new subscriptions. As things stand, Meta's proposals are illegal under the EU's data protection act, but the UK is no longer covered by that since Brexit. Currently, the UK hasn't changed its own data protection laws sufficiently to allow Meta to enact their proposals, but I've no doubt they're lobbying for a speedy change and I've no doubt the British government would be only to happy to accommodate them. Much as I find WhatsApp genuinely useful, when that time comes I will be cancelling my subscription. Meta already collect more data than all of the other messaging apps put together and I will never subscribe to Messenger; quite apart from my concerns regarding their Ts & Cs, why on earth do I need two apps that do the same thing? The only advantage WhatsApp has over its competitors is its volume of users and it's the only reason I haven't cancelled already: too many of my friends haven't heeded my advice.
Ten years ago, visiting S America, our hosts advised us to be wary of being accosted by a person w a weapon held to your head, driven to an ATM, and compelled to access your account and cough up cash, or else see harm come to you or your spouse or child. And then be harmed anyway.
Cash is good, I keep a bit in my safe for anticipated troubled times. US currency bills state they are "legal tender," but if Big Gubmint enacts a CBDC it's likely that using cash will become unlawful. Maybe SCOTUS would be able to save us; I don't know, as two recent decisions have been ignored: one by our current CINC, and just last night by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. So much for the Constitution, lawlessness abounds.
I travel quite a bit in the UK and every time I go back, there are fewer businesses that even accept cash, no matter how small the purchase. They just don't want it anymore. I don't even bother with currency exchange anymore because it's more of a bother and I never need it. I expect this the trend.
It's not that I fear a dystopian future, a cyberpunk shit fest would be cooler than where we are headed. What I fear and see happening is a lame future. All of today's tech is stupid, works like shit, and for the most part is crappier and rage inducing compared to its analog predecessors. Windows sucks, apple stuff sucks, the internet is barely usable compared to even a decade ago, audio quality sucks, movies are CGI cartoons, everything isn't scary, it's just damn lame.
Still using 7 Pro on my home computer. Bogs a little on some web sites, but it's nice that Microstupid and its cohorts aren't tracking everything I do when I'm on it.
Cyberpunk, are we talking William Gibson here? It's interesting how "Neuromancer" has affected the words we use regarding current technology. I haven't read it in a while, I will as soon as I finish Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy.
“The users feel used.” says it all. I am so tired of being frustrated by technology that tries to get me to do what it wants instead of what I want. I don’t want a “newsfeed” that pretends to be tailored for me, I want news: direct, straight, factual news. Bring back the teletype: facts, events, real occurrences.
Why can’t the “tech bros” see this? Lord Acton explained: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
I agree. Give me everything in my feed and let ME decide what I want to read. I generally hate curation, because it’s stagnant and just gives me the same thing over and over.
Yes. It used to be possible to refine your own searches by your own criteria without a lot of commercially manipulated algorithmic meddling. Who knows what is actually out there in the wide world anymore because of all the unrequested and undesired filtering?
That's true. The difference between the richest and poorest has never been greater. 40 years ago the top 3% owned 87% of the wealth, then it was the top 1% owned 99% of the wealth. The latest I heard was the top 1‰ (per mil, ie 1/1,000) own 90%.
Once again, a small number of owners with sharply delineated and asserted property rights —this time the A.I. elite — are extracting value from owners with weaker property rights — artists and consumers with no control over their data — then synthesizing it into new value, and selling it. I guarantee no one is using proprietary LLMs without strict controls, and paying in some way. And (almost) none of them are being developed to be given away for free. A meat grinder is being assembled. What goes in is taken without permission, what comes out is sold and resold, lining the pockets of tech bros with adolescent power fantasies. (Whatever Sam Altman’s skill set is, he is absolutely NOT qualified to render judgment on humanity and decide how society should evolve.)
News, media, art, and many other fields are going to be steamrolled. Standing in the way of this is not Luddism. We are not opting for the internal combustion engine over horse-drawn carriages. This is something totally different.
And Ted is right to remind tech leaders that they can’t just get away with this vampirism. There are more of us than them. Cynicism rules until people discover their power.
IDK...there's all this worry over AI steamrolling all those things, but can bullshit steamroll for long before its stink and lack of integrity renders it a deeply discrediting embarrassment for its proponents....
Careful when you go to wiki for information, it has become the star of enshittification. Gotta love the irony. I find it's generally only useful for looking up musicians' discographies.
This maybe the “basket of deplorables” moment for Big Tech when the everyday people who fill their days with providing food and shelter and fun for their families realize en masse what the Titans really think of them and get so effing pissed off that they drop everything they are doing and go scorched earth on the vapid clueless bimbos who believe they know what’s best for us.
Tech companies are taking cues from private equity: sell everything not bolted to the floor, force existing customers to pay more for less, shed workers so those that remain have to do more with less, and don't spend anything on improvements... grind it all down to the last penny, dump everything, and head on to the next quick fix leaving a trail of chaos and broken dreams behind.
I know this might be a little out in the weeds, but I’d be grateful to hear your thoughts on some of the philosophical underpinnings of current tech culture. Especially “longtermerism” and “transhumanism.”
It feels like the moral universe these folks are operating in is fundamentally different than most of ours. Moments like the one you describe at SXSW look like the clash starting to get real.
It’s not a coincidence that culture declines as these values define the technologies we live by more and more. I like some of the tech. But I’m on team human.
I live here in Silicon Valley. I've worked here most of my adult life. I don't know any transhumanists. That's not denying their existence, just their importance.
I think the issues we see are far more about money and power than they are about "tech" guys thinking strange thoughts. But they make a great scapegoat for the money and power people: "Look at those weirdos! They are your problem!"
I agree that a lot of scapegoating is happening. However, there are several transhumanist or transhumanist-adjacent people who are quite prominent techies, including Scott Alexander, Eliezer Yudkowski, Robin Hanson, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk etc. Not all of them self-identify as transhumanists, but many of their well-known talking points came from the movement.
I agree. And let’s include Marc Andreessen in this list. I’m sure one may work in Silicon Valley without knowing people whose thinking reflects these people’s, but it seems undeniable that several of the most influential people in tech espouse an alarming cluster of ideologies which deprioritize current human well-being in favor of future, digitally based consciousness. (That’s the basic idea of “longtermerism.”)
The things Ted Gioia writes about here so instructively are intrinsically related with the philosophical motivations of a small group of ultra rich, right-leaning technologists.
I’m for human connection, especially via music. Is Peter Thiel?
Although I disagree with him on several issues, I regularly find his actual written and spoken observations insightful. There are several confounding factors here: 1) Reporting on what celebrities are doing is usually designed to be maximally controversial. Often a person's real views are more reasonable than the media make them out to be. 2) Expertise is fragmented. Tech giants like Musk and Teal have genuine expertise in certain areas, but are also woefully ignorant in others. 3) The critics of these celebrities have expertise in the things that said celebrities are bad at, so they know when said celebs are being foolish, but they lack expertise on the things said celebs are actually good at, so each mistakenly assumes the other is incompetent. 4) Being so wealthy has a tendency to insulate them from negative feedback, causing them not to get the needed correction or occasional humiliation that is the lot of less powerful people. 5) The lack of correction makes their dumb statements get even dumber. 6) And on and on... I would like to see more people become capable of holding contradictory ideas in their heads during the evaluation process. You can dislike someone and still learn from them. You can also like someone but dislike a lot of things they've been doing, especially lately. And this trend from liking someone to disliking someone as they gain fame is a common one. Power corrupts.
As far as longtermism goes in particular, I think far fewer of these individuals are actual advocates of this concept. It originated from the Effective Altruism community, and it doesn't necessarily value digital consciousness as a specific desirable future state. It is a type of utilitarianism, a system of ethics which claims that if certain advances in tech, governance, etc will allow many more humans to live in better conditions than they do now, we should focus on whatever it takes to bring about those changes rather than follow a more conventional system of deontological ethics. One problem I see with longermism is that too often smart people assume their advanced rationality makes it obvious what choices will lead to this glorious future they imagine for humanity, when in reality they are far too often pursuing their heart's desire with post-hoc justifications.
That "alarming cluster of ideologies" is called TESCREAL. Transhumanism is one part of it, the others being extropianism (a belief that advances in science and technology will one day make us immortal), singularitarianism (a belief that AI will bring about either a new golden age of rapid progress or the extermination of humanity), cosmism (a late 19th/early 20th century Russian artistic movement that combined proto-transhumanism with Christianity and believed that humanity's divine purpose was to conquer death), rationalism (specifically the variety espoused by LessWrong), effective altruism, and longtermism.
The term was coined by Timnit Gebru, an AI researcher who got drummed out of Google in 2020 after she published a paper titled "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" warning about the ethical dangers she saw in a lot of AI research at the time, and Émile P. Torres, a writer and philosopher who was once part of that culture but has since turned against it. They've openly compared the TESCREAL movement to the eugenicists, seeing it as a movement by a clique of super-rich tech industry elites who think they're on a mission to save humanity and are willing to steamroll everyone who gets in their way.
Thanks for posting the link to Torres's piece, Kevin. He and Gebru are doing heroic work. Sadly, it seems to me like the TESCREAL ideas are so bizarre that they are easily dismissed—even by smart people. It all winds up sounding like tinfoil hat conspiracy nonsense. I believe that the eugenics angle is central to the problem. Current human life is worth less than future digital life to people with longtermerist views. Where is that leading?
I've written about how TESCREAL is related to the flattening of musical culture over on my newsletter in case you're interested. Here's a link:
To me, there is a giant difference between Scott Alexander, Eliezer Yudkowski and Robin Hanson on one hand and Peter Thiel and Elon Musk on the other.
Whacky ideas aren't the problem. Abuse of money and power is. For that matter, I don't think Thiel and Musk are the worst offenders. Both of them have arguably done projects that make the world better.
No, the worst offenders are people whose names you don't know. Because they like it that way.
Timothy, I am a co-founder of the Mormon Transhumanist Association and its current president. We are a 501c3 non-profit promoting the compassionate use of technology for healing and enhancing humanity. We were founded in 2006, long before transhumanism became more widely known. We seek to persuade secular people that religion and science are not mutually exclusive, and to persuade religious people that science and technology are essential aspects of the divine.
Part of our particular goal as religious transhumanists is to explore the ethical component to technology. We share the concerns of many people about how tech can be abused. On the other hand, moral panic around tech is a common historical precedent. Prior generations were worried about railroad trains ("women's uteruses will fall out if they go over 30 mph!"), photography ("It will put painters out of work!"), electricity ("It can kill a horse!"), aviation ("Man was not meant to go that fast!"), to name a few.
For what it's worth, there are many types of transhumanists. Not all of them are technological cheerleaders. Many of them, although generally optimistic about tech, are still far more worried about ways it can go wrong, having explored potential dystopian scenarios more thoroughly than most people. Some are cosmic pessimists. The caricatures of transhumanism often differ significantly from the actual people who identify as such.
Carl, I genuinely appreciate your thoughtful response and I agree that transhumanism encompasses a variety of viewpoints. I am heartened that yours emphasizes ethics.
However, suggesting that previous technopanics are analogous to today's emerging technologies seems like a false equivalence to me. Recent advances in computing are as qualitatively different from trains, photography, and electricity as the hydrogen bomb is from a stick of dynamite. That is to say, they pose an existential risk.
Maybe we can agree with William Carlos Williams (From The Desert Music, and Other Poems):
Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant
to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize
Thanks, Timothy. I agree with you. I believe AGI in particular is probably the greatest threat and opportunity for humanity. I recently wrote an in-depth essay for Wayfare Magazine on the topic. It is targeted at a Mormon audience but I think still quite accessible to anyone, and might be interesting to you:
The poem you shared is a poignant reminder of how some of the same drives that allow us to survive are not adapted to an environment that is as abundant and easy as ours sometimes is.
On the subject of moral panic in particular, I do still find it insightful to learn that even the panics we're presently experiencing rhyme with other recent scares that look silly in retrospect. A substack that has been quite interesting to follow is the Pessimists' Archive:
I will acknowledge it has a bit of a playful, satirical tone, and I genuinely don't mean to downplay the very real risks posed by accelerating technology, but I think the perspective these anecdotes add is valuable.
I should also point out that transhumanists have often described the 'singularity' as an unpredictable time that could just as well be horrible as it could be blissful. The movement is interested in understanding the future, both its perils and possibilities.
Maybe I'm being naïve, but I do think the dangers of AI have been greatly exaggerated. Remember Y2K? I was telling people at the time that it was all ridiculous. If you'll indulge me I'll explain why. For a start, things like toasters, washing machines, lifts (elevators in the US) and aeroplanes don't rely on systems that include date calculations. Second, systems that use two digit dates don't start at 1900. For instance, I was responsible for writing a printer driver for Texaco in the 80s that would translate the data they captured at their petrol pumps into human readable form. I did use a two digit date – memory was at a premium in those days – but I used an offset from 1976, so the date wouldn't roll around until 2075. I figured the system would long be superceded by then. If I remember correctly, 1976 was quite commonly used as a base date as it was the date of the current BIOS (Basic Input/Output System, the low level cup that translated most clicks and keyboard input into intelligible data, from the computers POV). The systems that did rely on date calculations were largely those used by financial institutions and there, admittedly, they could have caused problems. The fact remains that the panic over planes dropping out of the sky and your toaster refusing to toast were palpable nonsense. The software industry did a great deal of unnecessary business from it though.
I realize that AI is a while different ball game, but while the LLMs are impressive, they aren't conscious and they don't ‘understand’ the answers they're giving you. I've been approached by a couple on WhatsApp and while they're pretty convincing, it didn't take me long to work out that they weren't human. Maybe I'm better than average at spotting them, but nevertheless, they didn't pass the Turing test and I think that's outdated anyway. I'm no expert in AI, I was more of a systems engineer and perhaps I'm wrong, but I can't help thinking that the panic about AI has been greatly exaggerated. I still think a true machine intelligence is a long way off. Like Roger Penrose, I'm his book ‘The Emperor's New Mind’ (1989) I think there's something (quantum he put it) going on in our brains that we haven't begun to understand, let alone mimic.
I generally agree, but there are near term discontents from the current level of AI. Already some supposedly peer-reviewed academic papers are showing up online with the expression "As a large language model..." in them, demonstrating that their authors used AI and were too lazy to even proof-read them. Reviews of these papers were also caught using AI. The internet and physical media are being flooded with crap knockoffs, like Ted's example. This is only the beginning.
AGI is truly an existential threat to humanity if we don't solve the alignment problem, but I still think that's a way's out.
Yes, it is a whole other level. And I agree that there are serious threats with AI, but I also think it's too early to say where it will take us. From reading articles like this one and its replies of day that there are enough of us keeping an eye on things. I also admit that I'm an optimist in general, which doesn't mean that I'm not seriously worried. However, I can't honestly say that I'm as worried as I was in the early 70s. It's something I keep telling my son (he'll be 28 in May), that there's always some crisis and every period feels like it's worse than the last. I can only say that in 72/73 the oil crisis seemed very real and it looked like we'd be running out of oil within 30-40 years and, worse than that, the threat of nuclear war seemed frighteningly close. That really did keep me awake at night. There was also supposed to be an ice age overdue (and how ironic that seems now!). I'm perfectly willing to admit that I may be being over optimistic, but I was deeply pessimistic in those days (I was in my early to mid teens then). I used to think it was better to be pessimistic, that way you'll never be disappointed, but as I learned to become optimistic I found out the disappointments don't usually happen and when they do there's something new to be optimistic about. It's not always effective, I'm deeply concerned about our politicians' lack of urgency about climate change for instance, but I prefer not to worry about something until it's actually happening. And that isn't to say that I'm blissfully ignorant of the perils we face, be they AI, climate change or the rise of far right ideologies. Of course I'm concerned about them and I do worry about their consequences.
About six years ago while I was holidaying in the South of France I was enjoying a lively discussion and a few glasses of wine from the village vintner (it's a village of about 1,000 inhabitants and it had a grocery store, two bakeries, a bar and a vintner! A five litre bidon of wine was 6.50€! Needless to say the discussions were always joyful 🥰. Ironically I had a lot of German friends in that village 50/50 from Berlin, where I was born, and Düsseldorf). Anyway, we came up with a new philosophical movement: the boosts. In case you don't know ‘bof’ is a wonderful french word that expresses a Gallic shrug, a kind of ‘Oh, I don't know/mind/care/comme ci, comme ça’. We had a lot of fun with that, ‘bof’ being the answer to pretty much anything and everything 😂. I spent most evenings there, often until the early hours and we laughed a lot. I haven't been for a good five years but hope to go again this year.
Sorry, I digress, except that I guess that's my attitude to AI, although I don't mean to be as facetious as that sounds.
The danger lies with how few are in charge and that the majority are only interested in monetising it, as well as the fact that the engineers behind it don't really understand how it does what it does. My browser has an AI feature called Aria (I use Opera) which I have found quite useful, but it does have limits. Like most LLMs it's not very good at counting, let alone maths. I asked it to count the words in a paragraph, didn't believe its answer, so counted them myself and found it was out by about a dozen. I tested it on a fairly short sentence and it was wrong again, only by one, but it was just twelve words. But I guess that is one of its dangers, that we take its answers at face value and they're not always right. We'll have to see how things develop, but as you said, the genie is out of the bottle. It's up to us to remain vigilant.
Most longtermist influencers and organizations I know are anti-AI. They think there's a chance worth worrying about (1%-100%) that AI will destroy all humans and possibly "all value in the lightcone." And they're not willing to risk a smallish chance of long-term annihilation in exchange for short-term tech gains, even though as a SV culture they do feel good about more benign tech.
Transhumanists partially but not completely overlap. Some of them are longtermists and thus anti-AI, but most of them are pro-AI in my experience.
Its less about "fears of runaway AI" and more that we're all expected to embrace this technology that, at the same time, we're being told, will replace us in our careers. Tech bros are actually smiling at us while telling us we won't have a way to make income. Particularly in the creative professions. AI seems intent on replacing artists, animators, singers, musicians, actors, not to mention the whole production industry. These are jobs that people enjoy doing. Why take them away? It just seems like another idea - like derivatives or the republican party - by a bunch of psychopaths intent on making the world a worse place.
I'm actually a musician and I find AI music the least convincing of all AI output. To be precise, I'm a drummer and I remember when the Linn drum machine first appeared. ‘No more drummers!’ was the cry. Unlike most of my compatriots, I embraced drum machines and within a year I was getting as much work programming then as I was playing! “Your programmes just sound better” I was told and they haven't replaced drummers either. I remember when they started introducing ‘human error’ to make them sound more realistic 🤣. It just made them sound like bad drummers! When a drummer plays behind, on or ahead of the beat, they do it for a reason. It's what musicians call ‘feel’. It adds weight or lightness. Reggae exemplifies this more than most other kinds of music as it does all of those things at the same time (most music is either all behind, in our ahead of the best and, incidentally, reggae took me months to learn when I always used to pick things up almost instantly).
As I've said in other replies, maybe I'm being naïve, but I have the same attitude to AI as I did to drum machines and all the other amazing technology that's been developed in music: it's a tool. No doubt it will improve and I'm not claiming that I'll easily spot an AI piece of music over a human one. What I will say is that it's a very new and novel technology and I believe that as we get used to it we'll find it easier to spot the difference. To a certain extent, like drum machines, we'll tire of it. It will have its place, as drum machines do, but I'm not convinced it will replace any artists. It will become another tool in the musicians' arsenal and I'm looking forward to hearing some of the results as I'm sure there will be some real innovation.
As a drummer -- and a personal owner of both the LinnDrum and the LM-1 predecessor -- I take your point, and agree that all technology has the potential to drive innovation. That said, you and I grew up on the other side of drum machines. There are many who were raised on a strict diet of digital music and cannot detect the nuances in a Reggae feel, for example, or the craft of professional songwriting. As it overtakes the market, the next generation may, in turn, only know AI music, and many of the things we value in music today will become increasingly rarefied.
That's a fair point, but my son's a guitarist and DJ and he can still tell the difference. Maybe it will only be the serious musos and musicians who will hear and appreciate the difference. Then again, they're the ones who employ us. What I've heard of AI generated music lacks all the things that I think make it special and, perhaps optimistically, I believe that quality will always shine through. No doubt AI generated music will get better, but AI doesn't have a ‘soul’ nor emotions, both of which I think are essential parts of music. There's been production line music well before AI (I'm thinking of the likes of Stock Aiken & Waterman) and there's always been a market for it, but it hasn't destroyed genuinely good music and I think there will always be a demand for that too. I've worked with plenty of younger musicians and known plenty of musos and they're always interested in the history of music. I don't doubt we'll hear more and more AI generated music, but I don't believe it will ever replace us. There's an indefinable something about great musicians and while your average casual listener may not be able to tell the difference in the sense of whether it's AI generated or not, I'm convinced they can ‘sense’ it. As a drummer yourself you must know that an audience does appreciate a drummer with great feel? They play the same beast as a drum machine but add something that makes people tap their feet, feel the groove. The casual listener doesn't know what's different or why it sounds better, but many do think it is. Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but my experience has shown that and I hope I'm not wrong.
Some ten years or so ago, Radio 4 asked 100 scientists what the most interesting question in science was, for an end of year special. One physicist asked “Why do we like music?” That really struck me and I think it's actually a profound question. I don't have an answer but I do think that music is the language of emotion and a universal one at that. I also think it follows that emotion is an essential element of music and until AIs advance to the point where they experience emotions that will always be lacking and I think we're a long way off from that. It's music's ability to express emotion that makes it so powerful. It may not change the world, but its ability to reach into someone's soul has the ability to move people in ways that make them feel less isolated, less alone, less lonely and part of something greater. If AIs ever do develop emotions I think we'd have to consider them to be sentient and they'd no longer be machines any more than we are. Ultimately it comes down to this, something a jazz pianist friend of mine said, “There are two kinds of music, good music and bad music.” Whether the good music is produced by humans or AI isn't really relevant. I think there will always be room for both, but I'm not convinced that AI will reach that point for quite a while yet. And perhaps the most interesting music to come will be a collaboration between human and AI.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I appreciate your optimism too.
I think you're right on the question of "soul" and its place as a basic ingredient in music that affects us. The last time I really got deep into any contemporary movement in music was in the 90s with jungle. Incredibly innovative stuff sonically, and it relied heavily on the tools of the time, but in the end I felt there was a ceiling on it because it lacked that human element.
On your point that a typical audience can discern between a track and a live drummer's interpretation, and will often prefer the feel of the latter, I've seen it go both ways. Indeed, sometimes the drummer's organic flavor is no match for the energy of the machine or its "clean" aesthetic.
It's impossible to know exactly where AI will lead us in terms of our own creativity, but one thing I would note about the difference between the drum machine technology and AI is that the former is relatively simple. I have always believed that operating within certain limitations, as in the case of early drum machines, spurs the greatest advances in innovation.
Finally, I would return to my first argument and state that although I believe music to be an essential part of humanity, in the future it may not figure as dynamically into our culture. We humans are constrained by time and space, and I worry that the "production line" will get much longer as soon as AI can easily query and reproduce all music that has ever been conceived. (Keen students of history will be able to listen to history in real time and fill their lives with content.) I also see a related analogy to something like the institution of baseball, where a pastime that was once so deeply "felt" by much of the country is in danger of being replaced by social media and gambling interests -- apparently because they appeal to a lower common denominator and sell more. To be sure, pure forms of baseball still exist, but they are not experienced by the population at large.
Thanks to the last 15 years of Silicon Valley driven "disruption", one could argue that the future depicted in 80s and 90s CyberPunk is already here.
But without all the cool cyberware and implants. All we got was video-phones with flat-screens and a society where only a handful of powerful mega-corporations fight for dominance in a polluted hellscape where almost all non-human life has already been wiped out.
We have become distrustful not just of Tech, but of Leaders, because the default Model for Human Leadership is now Narcissism. In true Narcissists fashion, they make us feel good at first, only to later abuse us. Our every action and word is viewed only through lens of offense and corruption while we are harrassed by these Narcissists to 'think of others'... others meaning them , and only them -
and their Tech will do no less. Tech will serve only those who program it. If Narcissists are in Power, all things will serve them...
Excellent point. It's not the tech that's evil, it's the people who use it for ill. If the people here are any example, and I believe they are, then good will come of it too.
"It's not the tech that's evil, it's the people who use it for ill." There's also the problem that AI is, in what used to be called "programming," totally dependent upon who's doing the programming. GI Joe still rules, see the black founders of the US that AI recently conjured.
There's another famous axiom in programming circles: GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out, so yes, you're right. The emphasis on productivity, ie getting code out as quickly as possible will only exacerbate these kinds of faults; little time will be spent on checking the quality of the data being fed to the AIs. And even if the programmers have good intentions, they don't have much control over the data used to train AIs unless they screen it vigorously and that kind of defeats the object. The case you point out is one in point. I'm sure the programmer or trainer, whatever you call them now, was well intentioned and trying to mitigate the bias inherent in the data. AI has received a lot of attention and hype recently, so I hope that we all remain vigilant and don't just take it for granted that the answers AIs give are correct. Unfortunately there is a tendency to believe that computers don't make mistakes as was clearly shown by the Post Office scandal here in the UK – in case you're not aware of it (I don't know how much coverage it got in the US or anywhere else for that matter; it took a TV drama to bring it to greater attention here in the UK), hundreds of postmasters were wrongfully accused and prosecuted for fraud due to a faulty accounting system. However, the sheer number of cases should have made it obvious that there was a fault in it (called Horizon, supplied by Fujitsu; Fujitsu have issued a sincere apology for their part in the injustice, but they weren't responsible for the reprehensible behaviour of the post office's actions and they are dragging their feet in paying compensation and have not issued a sincere apology. On the contrary, they're claiming that there were some genuine cases of fraud. It really is disgraceful and shameful), but the executives at the post office acted appallingly, lying to the postmasters telling, them theirs was an isolated case and expending every effort to cover up their mistakes instead of trying to correct the fault. Instead of issuing a sincere apology they are claiming that some of the prosecutions were justified, that there were some genuine cases of fraud. Their actions have ruined many lives and led to several suicides. As long as the people in charge are so utterly shameless and disgraceful there is a great justification in fearing AIs influence. And I fear that this bias towards believing computers over people, the belief that they never make mistakes, will be even more prevalent with AI and that may be its greatest peril. If we're going to prevent falling prey to such injustices it's essential that the AI companies become much more transparent in how their AIs are trained.
You are correct in all aspects of your comment, and no, though I read a lot of different news-oriented web sites, I hadn't heard about the derelict scabs in the UK's postal service. Very interesting, or more so sad, that western governments are all showing a Marxist, totalitarian bent, i.e. the issues that have riled up farmers in European countries.
Regarding GI Joe (GIGO), I actually mentioned it in a comment I posted before the comment to which you've responded.
I'm sorry, I hadn't clicked that GI Joe is GIGO, my bad. One reason it hasn't registered is that I've always pronounced ‘guy-go’, with hard Gs. Another is that the dolls came up in a recent discussion on another topic – the dolls are called ‘Action Man’ in the UK (the discussion was about ‘Hersay's latest post re the anti abortion laws. A comedian I once saw likened giving birth to be like peeing a GI Joe for a man, to give us some idea (yes, ouch! All the men in the audience winced visibly). Apologies for that and thank you for your comment. I'm not surprised that the Post Office scandal didn't make it to the non British press. As I said, it was a TV drama based on one postmaster's long battle for justice that really brought it to people's attention even although it's been going on for over ten years (from 1999-2015. If you're interested there's a Wikipedia article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal?wprov=sfla1)
Up until then relatively few people knew about it even here. I didn't hear about it myself until about 18 months ago when I received an email asking me to sign a petition to exonerate the prosecuted postmasters and award them compensation. They really did a pretty good job of hushing it up and covering their arses; how they could sleep at night? The drama was very good, got a lot of attention and, not surprisingly, people were incensed at how appallingly the postmasters had been treated. It made the headlines the following day. By lying that their cases were isolated incidents it took years before the postmasters realized they weren't all alone, far from it, and started communicating and organising a fight back, a deliberate tactic to prevent them doing precisely that.
Anyway, thank you for your kind replies and sorry about the GI Joe/GIGO confusion.
That's insane. It sounds like the modern version of the Hundred Years War, only this time it's within Britain, and France isn't involved.
No apologies for any GIGO confusion. If you were born in the US it would have been perfectly clear! LOL Or not... "Action Man." LOL again! I've always had an affinity for you Brits. When I was four and five years old in the late sixties I lived in North Aston (between Oxford and Banbury) when my Dad was stationed at the USAF base at Upper Heyford, involved in the planning for the tactical nuke delivery program for use against the Soviets. (Talk about a dicey bit of piloting there.) My parents made many friends while we were there (some with whom I'm still in contact), as well as being able to spend time with others they had met while stationed at Laon (SW of Paris) in the late fifties, early sixties. One of my stepsons' wife is a Brit and now also a US citizen who loves Trump, bless her overtly capitalist heart. Smart and beautiful; glad to have her in the family.
Thank you! I feel like that’s a very accurate description of my disdain of technology. I started out in the software industry in the mid 90s and it was mind blowing. Now, it’s mind destroying.
I started in the mid 80s, but I agree. Back then we were into writing efficient and ‘elegant’ code (my language was mainly C), now it seems to be solely about how fast you can code. Some of the stuff I see nowadays is appallingly written and profligate. You can see that by how enormous apps have become. We measured ours in kB, notes it's MB or even GB and that's not all down to graphics.
My thoughts exactly Ted. What we have seen of AI so far displays very little Intelligence and whole lot of artificiality.
Moving aside the awful ethics of how large learning models have been 'trained' on the work of artists for the sole purposes of making more money for the bros in silicon Valley and beyond, I'd like to offer this
thought:
40,000 years ago when the first modern humans migrated to europe they endured some of the harshest survival conditions imaginable.
At some point they looked up to the heavens and began to dream of things beyond their understanding. In the act of conceiving, thinking and creating art such as the magnificent animals on the cave walls of Chavet, or the Ice age lion man carved from a single piece of mammoth Ivory, these incrediblec acts of creation MUST have expanded their minds and played a very significant part in the development of human intelligence.
Fast forward 40,000 years and the rise of AI has the potential to send us all (in some cases willingly!) back to the same caves we escaped from.. but this time the dream is more of a nightmare.
Whether we call it the Age of Aquarius, the change of the Yugas, the end of the current Simulation or what-have-you, something is definitely happening. We can feel it.
We need more booing.
Actually fantastic take.
In the classical music world, new works used to get REACTIONS. Premieres of new works would get booed pretty often. Sometimes they’d go on to be regarded as masterpieces, sometimes they’d be utterly forgotten. Nowadays, it’s all polite applause, and it’s all forgotten.
God yes, it’s so irritating. Every single performance ends with precisely a standing ovation comprised of two curtain calls. Drives me crazy.
Hilariously, there is a Wikipedia list!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_classical_music_concerts_with_an_unruly_audience_response
We need more boring, too. We've become a society where everything has to be mind blowing, exciting, never before seen, incredible and instantaneous 100% of the time.
Sensationalism is the byword for a culture that grown to value what is external rather than to cultivate the inner life.
Top comment ☝️☝️
People of influence and authority could not care less whether AI or any other tech is liked or popular. They care about whether the tech will bring them power and money.
That's it. Power and money. Sycophants can always be bought.
Yes, the voice of the people seems to hardly matter now, across the board. It's disappeared, along with "the customer is always right" and "elected officials serve the public." Still, all we need to do is use cash rather than cards for purchases. That tactic alone will demonstrate the power of individuals over megalith structures like Big Tech, Big Brother and Big Pharma. Catherine Austin Fitts talks about this all the time.
Recently I read an "overheard in NYC" exchange. Customer asked the cashier if they accepted Apple Pay or some other electronic form of payment. The cashier replied that they only accepted cash. The customer asked "How does that work?" The cashier replied "You hand it to me".
Took my wedding certificate in person to “Human resources “. Wanted to add my new wife to my insurance. I was turned away and told to “upload” it. Not something I know how to do. Seems crazy to not be able to accomplish this in person.
Electronic payment is actually an example of tech making life easier. More of that please.
Sure. If you have the wherewithal. Folks who do not have phones, or credit cards, or bank accounts, deal in cash. Businesses that refuse cash are deserving of closure til they grow some sense. It is illegal to refuse cash in San Francisco, home of tech, because the City has common decency. There are stores in the city I live in now that will not take cash. I refuse to shop there.
Yes, though I'm reluctant to instruct small businesses how to operate knowing how tough it is for them to survive. Also, the cohort you describe is exceedingly small. As a longstanding volunteer for a local charity I have received thousands of requests for help. Almost all come through mobile phones requesting Venmo attached to a bank debit card. But yes, the homeless population tends to be cash only. Due to mental illness and substance abuse (sometimes the latter is self-medicating the former), they often refuse the debit cards we offer them.
Bern wrote "There are stores in the city I live in now that will not take cash. I refuse to shop there."
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But those stores are still open and in business? That would mean that the loss of your business has not had any impact on them, yes?
The truth is that we need less focus on accommodating to the lowest common denominator, of hamstringing everyone else because some relatively few people are unable or choose not to move in sync with their societies.
I do not care if my choice has any impact on such operations. No perfect business. No perfect customer.
Perhaps your interactions with poor people are fewer than mine. Just because people are not sheltering in doorways does not mean they have adequate access to food, or a cup of coffee, or a bank account. Many people still rely on the cash economy that worked for them for much of their lives, but doesn't so much anymore.
No one is hamstrung when cash is accepted. Maybe the closing clerk is obligated to do a little extra work to wrangle the loose change at the end of business – possibly offset by no need to pay the credit card fee.
Lowest common denominator...oh, brother.
It's easy to say one individual's decision might not have any impact, as if that justifies people not making decisions as a matter of conscience. But impact does occur, as more people are engaged, what if Rosa Parks had simply moved to the back of the bus, cause hey, one person's action won't end segregation anyway?
"Electronic payments" or credit cards? They are not the same. I've had a credit card since I was in high school. My Dad had me get one because he said paying the bill on time would build my credit. He was right.
My wife and I don't use so-called "smart" phones, so electronic payments mean nothing to us. And I've never found that not using tech has made my life more difficult. On the contrary, it has made my life much less complicated, unlike having to jump through hoops just to log into financial and medical accounts, as well as logging on to my (very small) company's VPN.
As a registered architect I sometimes long for a return to the drafting board. It required actual skill to produce quality construction documents, and observing how recent architectural school graduates have such little understanding of actually constructing a building, it is reasonable to determine that much is lost between the keyboard, mouse, computer and what happens when drawings are plotted (printed on large format).
Also, I'll note that, should one of our country's strategic adversaries detonate an EMP warhead over the US, I'll still be able to start and drive my old Porsche. But I most likely will have to open the garage door manually...
Beware the day that cash money goes away. Even the lowly Lincoln penny.
Unfortunately governments are promoting contactless payments (it's yet another surveillance tool for them) and an increasing number of businesses won't accept cash anymore. I feel particularly sorry for the homeless beggars as fewer and fewer people even carry cash. The best I can do for them is to offer to buy them something. There's no doubt that contactless payments are handy and not having to carry cash makes us less vulnerable to muggings, although there's still the danger that you'll be forced to an ATM.
As for the social media companies, I've been warning people of the dangers of handing over your days to them for nearly a decade. They have far too much power and influence and all that in the hands of a very few unaccountable companies, unless you consider their accountability to their shareholders. That's not something that gives me any confidence. My preferred search engine is DuckDuckGo, which doesn't not retain your search history or sell it to third parties. My preferred messaging app is Signal which collects the minimum amount of data necessary to provide their service (name and phone number – it was founded by Brian Acton, one of the original founders of WhatsApp when he resigned from the Meta board in disgust at all the promises regarding privacy that Zuckerberg had broken). I too witnessed the advent of the world wide web – I was in the second year of my degree in Computer Science & Discrete Mathematics at the time – and was singing the internet's praises as a tool for the democratisation of knowledge. Then the commercialisation started; remember the dot com bubble? I still think the internet is a good thing, if not for anything else then for Wikipedia. For all its faults, which are wildly exaggerated – the social media companies and governments don't like us having all that knowledge at our fingertips so do their best to disparage it. But it's easy enough to correct any inaccuracies. I've personally edited some minor errors where I have the knowledge and there are a handful of stalwarts who do their best to ensure that it is as accurate as possible. I happen to add I have no personal investment apart from the occasional donations I make. To me it's one of the wonders of the modern world.
There are still good guys around, people whose overriding principle is to create something useful, rather than to monetize everything to the greatest degree possible. In my opinion the best we can do is support them and abandon companies like Meta, Google and Amazon. Hit them where it hurts, in their pockets. Unfortunately my warnings have mostly fallen on deaf ears. However, if enough of us switched to apps like Signal or Telegram the others would soon notice. A few years ago, when WhatsApp announced changes to it's Ts & Cs and wanted to integrate WhatsApp into Facebook as well as claim ownership and copyright for anything you publish on their sites, there was a large enough backlash that Meta abandoned the idea. Both Telegram's and Signal's websites crashed under the sheer weight of new subscriptions. As things stand, Meta's proposals are illegal under the EU's data protection act, but the UK is no longer covered by that since Brexit. Currently, the UK hasn't changed its own data protection laws sufficiently to allow Meta to enact their proposals, but I've no doubt they're lobbying for a speedy change and I've no doubt the British government would be only to happy to accommodate them. Much as I find WhatsApp genuinely useful, when that time comes I will be cancelling my subscription. Meta already collect more data than all of the other messaging apps put together and I will never subscribe to Messenger; quite apart from my concerns regarding their Ts & Cs, why on earth do I need two apps that do the same thing? The only advantage WhatsApp has over its competitors is its volume of users and it's the only reason I haven't cancelled already: too many of my friends haven't heeded my advice.
Ten years ago, visiting S America, our hosts advised us to be wary of being accosted by a person w a weapon held to your head, driven to an ATM, and compelled to access your account and cough up cash, or else see harm come to you or your spouse or child. And then be harmed anyway.
Cash is good, I keep a bit in my safe for anticipated troubled times. US currency bills state they are "legal tender," but if Big Gubmint enacts a CBDC it's likely that using cash will become unlawful. Maybe SCOTUS would be able to save us; I don't know, as two recent decisions have been ignored: one by our current CINC, and just last night by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. So much for the Constitution, lawlessness abounds.
I travel quite a bit in the UK and every time I go back, there are fewer businesses that even accept cash, no matter how small the purchase. They just don't want it anymore. I don't even bother with currency exchange anymore because it's more of a bother and I never need it. I expect this the trend.
It's not that I fear a dystopian future, a cyberpunk shit fest would be cooler than where we are headed. What I fear and see happening is a lame future. All of today's tech is stupid, works like shit, and for the most part is crappier and rage inducing compared to its analog predecessors. Windows sucks, apple stuff sucks, the internet is barely usable compared to even a decade ago, audio quality sucks, movies are CGI cartoons, everything isn't scary, it's just damn lame.
Windows XP emulators exist. Vote with your feet!
Still using 7 Pro on my home computer. Bogs a little on some web sites, but it's nice that Microstupid and its cohorts aren't tracking everything I do when I'm on it.
Yup, but it delivers control and ROI.
Cyberpunk, are we talking William Gibson here? It's interesting how "Neuromancer" has affected the words we use regarding current technology. I haven't read it in a while, I will as soon as I finish Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy.
“The users feel used.” says it all. I am so tired of being frustrated by technology that tries to get me to do what it wants instead of what I want. I don’t want a “newsfeed” that pretends to be tailored for me, I want news: direct, straight, factual news. Bring back the teletype: facts, events, real occurrences.
Why can’t the “tech bros” see this? Lord Acton explained: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
I've always liked Frank Herbert's paraphrasing of that axiom: “Power attracts the corruptible, absolute power the absolutely corruptible”
I agree. Give me everything in my feed and let ME decide what I want to read. I generally hate curation, because it’s stagnant and just gives me the same thing over and over.
Yes. It used to be possible to refine your own searches by your own criteria without a lot of commercially manipulated algorithmic meddling. Who knows what is actually out there in the wide world anymore because of all the unrequested and undesired filtering?
Yes. It's sad we long for the good ol' days less than a decade ago.
"FEEL" used ? They know they ARE used
This ^^^^^^
I doubt there’s ever been a moment in my lifetime where the rift between the managerial class and the workers has ever been larger
That's true. The difference between the richest and poorest has never been greater. 40 years ago the top 3% owned 87% of the wealth, then it was the top 1% owned 99% of the wealth. The latest I heard was the top 1‰ (per mil, ie 1/1,000) own 90%.
Ted is spot on.
Once again, a small number of owners with sharply delineated and asserted property rights —this time the A.I. elite — are extracting value from owners with weaker property rights — artists and consumers with no control over their data — then synthesizing it into new value, and selling it. I guarantee no one is using proprietary LLMs without strict controls, and paying in some way. And (almost) none of them are being developed to be given away for free. A meat grinder is being assembled. What goes in is taken without permission, what comes out is sold and resold, lining the pockets of tech bros with adolescent power fantasies. (Whatever Sam Altman’s skill set is, he is absolutely NOT qualified to render judgment on humanity and decide how society should evolve.)
News, media, art, and many other fields are going to be steamrolled. Standing in the way of this is not Luddism. We are not opting for the internal combustion engine over horse-drawn carriages. This is something totally different.
And Ted is right to remind tech leaders that they can’t just get away with this vampirism. There are more of us than them. Cynicism rules until people discover their power.
IDK...there's all this worry over AI steamrolling all those things, but can bullshit steamroll for long before its stink and lack of integrity renders it a deeply discrediting embarrassment for its proponents....
It is the enshittification of the Internet: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification.
Careful when you go to wiki for information, it has become the star of enshittification. Gotta love the irony. I find it's generally only useful for looking up musicians' discographies.
This maybe the “basket of deplorables” moment for Big Tech when the everyday people who fill their days with providing food and shelter and fun for their families realize en masse what the Titans really think of them and get so effing pissed off that they drop everything they are doing and go scorched earth on the vapid clueless bimbos who believe they know what’s best for us.
From your lips to God's ears...
Tech companies are taking cues from private equity: sell everything not bolted to the floor, force existing customers to pay more for less, shed workers so those that remain have to do more with less, and don't spend anything on improvements... grind it all down to the last penny, dump everything, and head on to the next quick fix leaving a trail of chaos and broken dreams behind.
I know this might be a little out in the weeds, but I’d be grateful to hear your thoughts on some of the philosophical underpinnings of current tech culture. Especially “longtermerism” and “transhumanism.”
It feels like the moral universe these folks are operating in is fundamentally different than most of ours. Moments like the one you describe at SXSW look like the clash starting to get real.
It’s not a coincidence that culture declines as these values define the technologies we live by more and more. I like some of the tech. But I’m on team human.
Yes. The transhumanist movement is coming across not as an aid to humanity, but as a betrayal.
I live here in Silicon Valley. I've worked here most of my adult life. I don't know any transhumanists. That's not denying their existence, just their importance.
I think the issues we see are far more about money and power than they are about "tech" guys thinking strange thoughts. But they make a great scapegoat for the money and power people: "Look at those weirdos! They are your problem!"
I agree that a lot of scapegoating is happening. However, there are several transhumanist or transhumanist-adjacent people who are quite prominent techies, including Scott Alexander, Eliezer Yudkowski, Robin Hanson, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk etc. Not all of them self-identify as transhumanists, but many of their well-known talking points came from the movement.
I agree. And let’s include Marc Andreessen in this list. I’m sure one may work in Silicon Valley without knowing people whose thinking reflects these people’s, but it seems undeniable that several of the most influential people in tech espouse an alarming cluster of ideologies which deprioritize current human well-being in favor of future, digitally based consciousness. (That’s the basic idea of “longtermerism.”)
The things Ted Gioia writes about here so instructively are intrinsically related with the philosophical motivations of a small group of ultra rich, right-leaning technologists.
I’m for human connection, especially via music. Is Peter Thiel?
Although I disagree with him on several issues, I regularly find his actual written and spoken observations insightful. There are several confounding factors here: 1) Reporting on what celebrities are doing is usually designed to be maximally controversial. Often a person's real views are more reasonable than the media make them out to be. 2) Expertise is fragmented. Tech giants like Musk and Teal have genuine expertise in certain areas, but are also woefully ignorant in others. 3) The critics of these celebrities have expertise in the things that said celebrities are bad at, so they know when said celebs are being foolish, but they lack expertise on the things said celebs are actually good at, so each mistakenly assumes the other is incompetent. 4) Being so wealthy has a tendency to insulate them from negative feedback, causing them not to get the needed correction or occasional humiliation that is the lot of less powerful people. 5) The lack of correction makes their dumb statements get even dumber. 6) And on and on... I would like to see more people become capable of holding contradictory ideas in their heads during the evaluation process. You can dislike someone and still learn from them. You can also like someone but dislike a lot of things they've been doing, especially lately. And this trend from liking someone to disliking someone as they gain fame is a common one. Power corrupts.
As far as longtermism goes in particular, I think far fewer of these individuals are actual advocates of this concept. It originated from the Effective Altruism community, and it doesn't necessarily value digital consciousness as a specific desirable future state. It is a type of utilitarianism, a system of ethics which claims that if certain advances in tech, governance, etc will allow many more humans to live in better conditions than they do now, we should focus on whatever it takes to bring about those changes rather than follow a more conventional system of deontological ethics. One problem I see with longermism is that too often smart people assume their advanced rationality makes it obvious what choices will lead to this glorious future they imagine for humanity, when in reality they are far too often pursuing their heart's desire with post-hoc justifications.
That "alarming cluster of ideologies" is called TESCREAL. Transhumanism is one part of it, the others being extropianism (a belief that advances in science and technology will one day make us immortal), singularitarianism (a belief that AI will bring about either a new golden age of rapid progress or the extermination of humanity), cosmism (a late 19th/early 20th century Russian artistic movement that combined proto-transhumanism with Christianity and believed that humanity's divine purpose was to conquer death), rationalism (specifically the variety espoused by LessWrong), effective altruism, and longtermism.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-acronym-behind-our-wildest-ai-dreams-and-nightmares/
The term was coined by Timnit Gebru, an AI researcher who got drummed out of Google in 2020 after she published a paper titled "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" warning about the ethical dangers she saw in a lot of AI research at the time, and Émile P. Torres, a writer and philosopher who was once part of that culture but has since turned against it. They've openly compared the TESCREAL movement to the eugenicists, seeing it as a movement by a clique of super-rich tech industry elites who think they're on a mission to save humanity and are willing to steamroll everyone who gets in their way.
Thanks for posting the link to Torres's piece, Kevin. He and Gebru are doing heroic work. Sadly, it seems to me like the TESCREAL ideas are so bizarre that they are easily dismissed—even by smart people. It all winds up sounding like tinfoil hat conspiracy nonsense. I believe that the eugenics angle is central to the problem. Current human life is worth less than future digital life to people with longtermerist views. Where is that leading?
I've written about how TESCREAL is related to the flattening of musical culture over on my newsletter in case you're interested. Here's a link:
https://open.substack.com/pub/greaterhumanity/p/against-spotify-a-manifesto?r=na2kt&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
To me, there is a giant difference between Scott Alexander, Eliezer Yudkowski and Robin Hanson on one hand and Peter Thiel and Elon Musk on the other.
Whacky ideas aren't the problem. Abuse of money and power is. For that matter, I don't think Thiel and Musk are the worst offenders. Both of them have arguably done projects that make the world better.
No, the worst offenders are people whose names you don't know. Because they like it that way.
Which Scott Alexander are you referring to? Slate Star Codex?
Yes.
Timothy, I am a co-founder of the Mormon Transhumanist Association and its current president. We are a 501c3 non-profit promoting the compassionate use of technology for healing and enhancing humanity. We were founded in 2006, long before transhumanism became more widely known. We seek to persuade secular people that religion and science are not mutually exclusive, and to persuade religious people that science and technology are essential aspects of the divine.
Part of our particular goal as religious transhumanists is to explore the ethical component to technology. We share the concerns of many people about how tech can be abused. On the other hand, moral panic around tech is a common historical precedent. Prior generations were worried about railroad trains ("women's uteruses will fall out if they go over 30 mph!"), photography ("It will put painters out of work!"), electricity ("It can kill a horse!"), aviation ("Man was not meant to go that fast!"), to name a few.
For what it's worth, there are many types of transhumanists. Not all of them are technological cheerleaders. Many of them, although generally optimistic about tech, are still far more worried about ways it can go wrong, having explored potential dystopian scenarios more thoroughly than most people. Some are cosmic pessimists. The caricatures of transhumanism often differ significantly from the actual people who identify as such.
Happy to answer questions if you're ever curious.
Carl, I genuinely appreciate your thoughtful response and I agree that transhumanism encompasses a variety of viewpoints. I am heartened that yours emphasizes ethics.
However, suggesting that previous technopanics are analogous to today's emerging technologies seems like a false equivalence to me. Recent advances in computing are as qualitatively different from trains, photography, and electricity as the hydrogen bomb is from a stick of dynamite. That is to say, they pose an existential risk.
Maybe we can agree with William Carlos Williams (From The Desert Music, and Other Poems):
Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant
to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize
them, he must either change them or perish
Thanks, Timothy. I agree with you. I believe AGI in particular is probably the greatest threat and opportunity for humanity. I recently wrote an in-depth essay for Wayfare Magazine on the topic. It is targeted at a Mormon audience but I think still quite accessible to anyone, and might be interesting to you:
https://www.wayfaremagazine.org/p/algorithmic-advent
The poem you shared is a poignant reminder of how some of the same drives that allow us to survive are not adapted to an environment that is as abundant and easy as ours sometimes is.
On the subject of moral panic in particular, I do still find it insightful to learn that even the panics we're presently experiencing rhyme with other recent scares that look silly in retrospect. A substack that has been quite interesting to follow is the Pessimists' Archive:
https://substack.com/@pessimistsarchive
I will acknowledge it has a bit of a playful, satirical tone, and I genuinely don't mean to downplay the very real risks posed by accelerating technology, but I think the perspective these anecdotes add is valuable.
I should also point out that transhumanists have often described the 'singularity' as an unpredictable time that could just as well be horrible as it could be blissful. The movement is interested in understanding the future, both its perils and possibilities.
Maybe I'm being naïve, but I do think the dangers of AI have been greatly exaggerated. Remember Y2K? I was telling people at the time that it was all ridiculous. If you'll indulge me I'll explain why. For a start, things like toasters, washing machines, lifts (elevators in the US) and aeroplanes don't rely on systems that include date calculations. Second, systems that use two digit dates don't start at 1900. For instance, I was responsible for writing a printer driver for Texaco in the 80s that would translate the data they captured at their petrol pumps into human readable form. I did use a two digit date – memory was at a premium in those days – but I used an offset from 1976, so the date wouldn't roll around until 2075. I figured the system would long be superceded by then. If I remember correctly, 1976 was quite commonly used as a base date as it was the date of the current BIOS (Basic Input/Output System, the low level cup that translated most clicks and keyboard input into intelligible data, from the computers POV). The systems that did rely on date calculations were largely those used by financial institutions and there, admittedly, they could have caused problems. The fact remains that the panic over planes dropping out of the sky and your toaster refusing to toast were palpable nonsense. The software industry did a great deal of unnecessary business from it though.
I realize that AI is a while different ball game, but while the LLMs are impressive, they aren't conscious and they don't ‘understand’ the answers they're giving you. I've been approached by a couple on WhatsApp and while they're pretty convincing, it didn't take me long to work out that they weren't human. Maybe I'm better than average at spotting them, but nevertheless, they didn't pass the Turing test and I think that's outdated anyway. I'm no expert in AI, I was more of a systems engineer and perhaps I'm wrong, but I can't help thinking that the panic about AI has been greatly exaggerated. I still think a true machine intelligence is a long way off. Like Roger Penrose, I'm his book ‘The Emperor's New Mind’ (1989) I think there's something (quantum he put it) going on in our brains that we haven't begun to understand, let alone mimic.
I generally agree, but there are near term discontents from the current level of AI. Already some supposedly peer-reviewed academic papers are showing up online with the expression "As a large language model..." in them, demonstrating that their authors used AI and were too lazy to even proof-read them. Reviews of these papers were also caught using AI. The internet and physical media are being flooded with crap knockoffs, like Ted's example. This is only the beginning.
AGI is truly an existential threat to humanity if we don't solve the alignment problem, but I still think that's a way's out.
Yes, it is a whole other level. And I agree that there are serious threats with AI, but I also think it's too early to say where it will take us. From reading articles like this one and its replies of day that there are enough of us keeping an eye on things. I also admit that I'm an optimist in general, which doesn't mean that I'm not seriously worried. However, I can't honestly say that I'm as worried as I was in the early 70s. It's something I keep telling my son (he'll be 28 in May), that there's always some crisis and every period feels like it's worse than the last. I can only say that in 72/73 the oil crisis seemed very real and it looked like we'd be running out of oil within 30-40 years and, worse than that, the threat of nuclear war seemed frighteningly close. That really did keep me awake at night. There was also supposed to be an ice age overdue (and how ironic that seems now!). I'm perfectly willing to admit that I may be being over optimistic, but I was deeply pessimistic in those days (I was in my early to mid teens then). I used to think it was better to be pessimistic, that way you'll never be disappointed, but as I learned to become optimistic I found out the disappointments don't usually happen and when they do there's something new to be optimistic about. It's not always effective, I'm deeply concerned about our politicians' lack of urgency about climate change for instance, but I prefer not to worry about something until it's actually happening. And that isn't to say that I'm blissfully ignorant of the perils we face, be they AI, climate change or the rise of far right ideologies. Of course I'm concerned about them and I do worry about their consequences.
About six years ago while I was holidaying in the South of France I was enjoying a lively discussion and a few glasses of wine from the village vintner (it's a village of about 1,000 inhabitants and it had a grocery store, two bakeries, a bar and a vintner! A five litre bidon of wine was 6.50€! Needless to say the discussions were always joyful 🥰. Ironically I had a lot of German friends in that village 50/50 from Berlin, where I was born, and Düsseldorf). Anyway, we came up with a new philosophical movement: the boosts. In case you don't know ‘bof’ is a wonderful french word that expresses a Gallic shrug, a kind of ‘Oh, I don't know/mind/care/comme ci, comme ça’. We had a lot of fun with that, ‘bof’ being the answer to pretty much anything and everything 😂. I spent most evenings there, often until the early hours and we laughed a lot. I haven't been for a good five years but hope to go again this year.
Sorry, I digress, except that I guess that's my attitude to AI, although I don't mean to be as facetious as that sounds.
The danger lies with how few are in charge and that the majority are only interested in monetising it, as well as the fact that the engineers behind it don't really understand how it does what it does. My browser has an AI feature called Aria (I use Opera) which I have found quite useful, but it does have limits. Like most LLMs it's not very good at counting, let alone maths. I asked it to count the words in a paragraph, didn't believe its answer, so counted them myself and found it was out by about a dozen. I tested it on a fairly short sentence and it was wrong again, only by one, but it was just twelve words. But I guess that is one of its dangers, that we take its answers at face value and they're not always right. We'll have to see how things develop, but as you said, the genie is out of the bottle. It's up to us to remain vigilant.
Sorry, ‘of day’ was meant to say ‘I'd say’
If AI is so clever, why can't they make a spellcheck that works? If there is one thing that an LLM ought be able to do....
Most longtermist influencers and organizations I know are anti-AI. They think there's a chance worth worrying about (1%-100%) that AI will destroy all humans and possibly "all value in the lightcone." And they're not willing to risk a smallish chance of long-term annihilation in exchange for short-term tech gains, even though as a SV culture they do feel good about more benign tech.
Transhumanists partially but not completely overlap. Some of them are longtermists and thus anti-AI, but most of them are pro-AI in my experience.
...a.i. art is boring...
Its less about "fears of runaway AI" and more that we're all expected to embrace this technology that, at the same time, we're being told, will replace us in our careers. Tech bros are actually smiling at us while telling us we won't have a way to make income. Particularly in the creative professions. AI seems intent on replacing artists, animators, singers, musicians, actors, not to mention the whole production industry. These are jobs that people enjoy doing. Why take them away? It just seems like another idea - like derivatives or the republican party - by a bunch of psychopaths intent on making the world a worse place.
I'm actually a musician and I find AI music the least convincing of all AI output. To be precise, I'm a drummer and I remember when the Linn drum machine first appeared. ‘No more drummers!’ was the cry. Unlike most of my compatriots, I embraced drum machines and within a year I was getting as much work programming then as I was playing! “Your programmes just sound better” I was told and they haven't replaced drummers either. I remember when they started introducing ‘human error’ to make them sound more realistic 🤣. It just made them sound like bad drummers! When a drummer plays behind, on or ahead of the beat, they do it for a reason. It's what musicians call ‘feel’. It adds weight or lightness. Reggae exemplifies this more than most other kinds of music as it does all of those things at the same time (most music is either all behind, in our ahead of the best and, incidentally, reggae took me months to learn when I always used to pick things up almost instantly).
As I've said in other replies, maybe I'm being naïve, but I have the same attitude to AI as I did to drum machines and all the other amazing technology that's been developed in music: it's a tool. No doubt it will improve and I'm not claiming that I'll easily spot an AI piece of music over a human one. What I will say is that it's a very new and novel technology and I believe that as we get used to it we'll find it easier to spot the difference. To a certain extent, like drum machines, we'll tire of it. It will have its place, as drum machines do, but I'm not convinced it will replace any artists. It will become another tool in the musicians' arsenal and I'm looking forward to hearing some of the results as I'm sure there will be some real innovation.
As a drummer -- and a personal owner of both the LinnDrum and the LM-1 predecessor -- I take your point, and agree that all technology has the potential to drive innovation. That said, you and I grew up on the other side of drum machines. There are many who were raised on a strict diet of digital music and cannot detect the nuances in a Reggae feel, for example, or the craft of professional songwriting. As it overtakes the market, the next generation may, in turn, only know AI music, and many of the things we value in music today will become increasingly rarefied.
That's a fair point, but my son's a guitarist and DJ and he can still tell the difference. Maybe it will only be the serious musos and musicians who will hear and appreciate the difference. Then again, they're the ones who employ us. What I've heard of AI generated music lacks all the things that I think make it special and, perhaps optimistically, I believe that quality will always shine through. No doubt AI generated music will get better, but AI doesn't have a ‘soul’ nor emotions, both of which I think are essential parts of music. There's been production line music well before AI (I'm thinking of the likes of Stock Aiken & Waterman) and there's always been a market for it, but it hasn't destroyed genuinely good music and I think there will always be a demand for that too. I've worked with plenty of younger musicians and known plenty of musos and they're always interested in the history of music. I don't doubt we'll hear more and more AI generated music, but I don't believe it will ever replace us. There's an indefinable something about great musicians and while your average casual listener may not be able to tell the difference in the sense of whether it's AI generated or not, I'm convinced they can ‘sense’ it. As a drummer yourself you must know that an audience does appreciate a drummer with great feel? They play the same beast as a drum machine but add something that makes people tap their feet, feel the groove. The casual listener doesn't know what's different or why it sounds better, but many do think it is. Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but my experience has shown that and I hope I'm not wrong.
Some ten years or so ago, Radio 4 asked 100 scientists what the most interesting question in science was, for an end of year special. One physicist asked “Why do we like music?” That really struck me and I think it's actually a profound question. I don't have an answer but I do think that music is the language of emotion and a universal one at that. I also think it follows that emotion is an essential element of music and until AIs advance to the point where they experience emotions that will always be lacking and I think we're a long way off from that. It's music's ability to express emotion that makes it so powerful. It may not change the world, but its ability to reach into someone's soul has the ability to move people in ways that make them feel less isolated, less alone, less lonely and part of something greater. If AIs ever do develop emotions I think we'd have to consider them to be sentient and they'd no longer be machines any more than we are. Ultimately it comes down to this, something a jazz pianist friend of mine said, “There are two kinds of music, good music and bad music.” Whether the good music is produced by humans or AI isn't really relevant. I think there will always be room for both, but I'm not convinced that AI will reach that point for quite a while yet. And perhaps the most interesting music to come will be a collaboration between human and AI.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I appreciate your optimism too.
I think you're right on the question of "soul" and its place as a basic ingredient in music that affects us. The last time I really got deep into any contemporary movement in music was in the 90s with jungle. Incredibly innovative stuff sonically, and it relied heavily on the tools of the time, but in the end I felt there was a ceiling on it because it lacked that human element.
On your point that a typical audience can discern between a track and a live drummer's interpretation, and will often prefer the feel of the latter, I've seen it go both ways. Indeed, sometimes the drummer's organic flavor is no match for the energy of the machine or its "clean" aesthetic.
It's impossible to know exactly where AI will lead us in terms of our own creativity, but one thing I would note about the difference between the drum machine technology and AI is that the former is relatively simple. I have always believed that operating within certain limitations, as in the case of early drum machines, spurs the greatest advances in innovation.
Finally, I would return to my first argument and state that although I believe music to be an essential part of humanity, in the future it may not figure as dynamically into our culture. We humans are constrained by time and space, and I worry that the "production line" will get much longer as soon as AI can easily query and reproduce all music that has ever been conceived. (Keen students of history will be able to listen to history in real time and fill their lives with content.) I also see a related analogy to something like the institution of baseball, where a pastime that was once so deeply "felt" by much of the country is in danger of being replaced by social media and gambling interests -- apparently because they appeal to a lower common denominator and sell more. To be sure, pure forms of baseball still exist, but they are not experienced by the population at large.
I dunno. Keep on banging', my friend.
The future is bright, but you might get fired, have your digital identity stolen and will come to distrust everything you see online.
Thanks to the last 15 years of Silicon Valley driven "disruption", one could argue that the future depicted in 80s and 90s CyberPunk is already here.
But without all the cool cyberware and implants. All we got was video-phones with flat-screens and a society where only a handful of powerful mega-corporations fight for dominance in a polluted hellscape where almost all non-human life has already been wiped out.
And with that comment you win the interweb on Ted's latest commentary. Bravo
We have become distrustful not just of Tech, but of Leaders, because the default Model for Human Leadership is now Narcissism. In true Narcissists fashion, they make us feel good at first, only to later abuse us. Our every action and word is viewed only through lens of offense and corruption while we are harrassed by these Narcissists to 'think of others'... others meaning them , and only them -
and their Tech will do no less. Tech will serve only those who program it. If Narcissists are in Power, all things will serve them...
depose Narcissists.
Excellent point. It's not the tech that's evil, it's the people who use it for ill. If the people here are any example, and I believe they are, then good will come of it too.
"It's not the tech that's evil, it's the people who use it for ill." There's also the problem that AI is, in what used to be called "programming," totally dependent upon who's doing the programming. GI Joe still rules, see the black founders of the US that AI recently conjured.
There's another famous axiom in programming circles: GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out, so yes, you're right. The emphasis on productivity, ie getting code out as quickly as possible will only exacerbate these kinds of faults; little time will be spent on checking the quality of the data being fed to the AIs. And even if the programmers have good intentions, they don't have much control over the data used to train AIs unless they screen it vigorously and that kind of defeats the object. The case you point out is one in point. I'm sure the programmer or trainer, whatever you call them now, was well intentioned and trying to mitigate the bias inherent in the data. AI has received a lot of attention and hype recently, so I hope that we all remain vigilant and don't just take it for granted that the answers AIs give are correct. Unfortunately there is a tendency to believe that computers don't make mistakes as was clearly shown by the Post Office scandal here in the UK – in case you're not aware of it (I don't know how much coverage it got in the US or anywhere else for that matter; it took a TV drama to bring it to greater attention here in the UK), hundreds of postmasters were wrongfully accused and prosecuted for fraud due to a faulty accounting system. However, the sheer number of cases should have made it obvious that there was a fault in it (called Horizon, supplied by Fujitsu; Fujitsu have issued a sincere apology for their part in the injustice, but they weren't responsible for the reprehensible behaviour of the post office's actions and they are dragging their feet in paying compensation and have not issued a sincere apology. On the contrary, they're claiming that there were some genuine cases of fraud. It really is disgraceful and shameful), but the executives at the post office acted appallingly, lying to the postmasters telling, them theirs was an isolated case and expending every effort to cover up their mistakes instead of trying to correct the fault. Instead of issuing a sincere apology they are claiming that some of the prosecutions were justified, that there were some genuine cases of fraud. Their actions have ruined many lives and led to several suicides. As long as the people in charge are so utterly shameless and disgraceful there is a great justification in fearing AIs influence. And I fear that this bias towards believing computers over people, the belief that they never make mistakes, will be even more prevalent with AI and that may be its greatest peril. If we're going to prevent falling prey to such injustices it's essential that the AI companies become much more transparent in how their AIs are trained.
You are correct in all aspects of your comment, and no, though I read a lot of different news-oriented web sites, I hadn't heard about the derelict scabs in the UK's postal service. Very interesting, or more so sad, that western governments are all showing a Marxist, totalitarian bent, i.e. the issues that have riled up farmers in European countries.
Regarding GI Joe (GIGO), I actually mentioned it in a comment I posted before the comment to which you've responded.
I'm sorry, I hadn't clicked that GI Joe is GIGO, my bad. One reason it hasn't registered is that I've always pronounced ‘guy-go’, with hard Gs. Another is that the dolls came up in a recent discussion on another topic – the dolls are called ‘Action Man’ in the UK (the discussion was about ‘Hersay's latest post re the anti abortion laws. A comedian I once saw likened giving birth to be like peeing a GI Joe for a man, to give us some idea (yes, ouch! All the men in the audience winced visibly). Apologies for that and thank you for your comment. I'm not surprised that the Post Office scandal didn't make it to the non British press. As I said, it was a TV drama based on one postmaster's long battle for justice that really brought it to people's attention even although it's been going on for over ten years (from 1999-2015. If you're interested there's a Wikipedia article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal?wprov=sfla1)
Up until then relatively few people knew about it even here. I didn't hear about it myself until about 18 months ago when I received an email asking me to sign a petition to exonerate the prosecuted postmasters and award them compensation. They really did a pretty good job of hushing it up and covering their arses; how they could sleep at night? The drama was very good, got a lot of attention and, not surprisingly, people were incensed at how appallingly the postmasters had been treated. It made the headlines the following day. By lying that their cases were isolated incidents it took years before the postmasters realized they weren't all alone, far from it, and started communicating and organising a fight back, a deliberate tactic to prevent them doing precisely that.
Anyway, thank you for your kind replies and sorry about the GI Joe/GIGO confusion.
That's insane. It sounds like the modern version of the Hundred Years War, only this time it's within Britain, and France isn't involved.
No apologies for any GIGO confusion. If you were born in the US it would have been perfectly clear! LOL Or not... "Action Man." LOL again! I've always had an affinity for you Brits. When I was four and five years old in the late sixties I lived in North Aston (between Oxford and Banbury) when my Dad was stationed at the USAF base at Upper Heyford, involved in the planning for the tactical nuke delivery program for use against the Soviets. (Talk about a dicey bit of piloting there.) My parents made many friends while we were there (some with whom I'm still in contact), as well as being able to spend time with others they had met while stationed at Laon (SW of Paris) in the late fifties, early sixties. One of my stepsons' wife is a Brit and now also a US citizen who loves Trump, bless her overtly capitalist heart. Smart and beautiful; glad to have her in the family.
Go Action Man!!!
Thank you! I feel like that’s a very accurate description of my disdain of technology. I started out in the software industry in the mid 90s and it was mind blowing. Now, it’s mind destroying.
I started in the mid 80s, but I agree. Back then we were into writing efficient and ‘elegant’ code (my language was mainly C), now it seems to be solely about how fast you can code. Some of the stuff I see nowadays is appallingly written and profligate. You can see that by how enormous apps have become. We measured ours in kB, notes it's MB or even GB and that's not all down to graphics.
My thoughts exactly Ted. What we have seen of AI so far displays very little Intelligence and whole lot of artificiality.
Moving aside the awful ethics of how large learning models have been 'trained' on the work of artists for the sole purposes of making more money for the bros in silicon Valley and beyond, I'd like to offer this
thought:
40,000 years ago when the first modern humans migrated to europe they endured some of the harshest survival conditions imaginable.
At some point they looked up to the heavens and began to dream of things beyond their understanding. In the act of conceiving, thinking and creating art such as the magnificent animals on the cave walls of Chavet, or the Ice age lion man carved from a single piece of mammoth Ivory, these incrediblec acts of creation MUST have expanded their minds and played a very significant part in the development of human intelligence.
Fast forward 40,000 years and the rise of AI has the potential to send us all (in some cases willingly!) back to the same caves we escaped from.. but this time the dream is more of a nightmare.
Whether we call it the Age of Aquarius, the change of the Yugas, the end of the current Simulation or what-have-you, something is definitely happening. We can feel it.
Had to look up Yugas
Me too. 🙂
More like the Kali Yuga, except it doesn't seems to be stopping.