A few days back I got an email from TPM Reader JL asking me not to give in to the Luddite or reflexively anti-AI tendency he sensed I might have. It was a very interesting note and led to an interesting exchange because JL is far from an AI maximalist or promoter and our views ended up not being that far apart. I explained at greater length that my general skepticism toward AI is based on four interrelated points.
The first is that even very positive technological revolutions (say, the Industrial Revolution) end up hurting a lot of people. Second, this revolution is coming to us under the guidance and ownership of tech billionaires who are increasingly wedded to and driven by predatory and illiberal ideologies. Both those facts make me think that we should approach every new AI development from a posture of skepticism, even if some or most may end up being positive. Trust but verify and all that. Point three is closely related to point two: AI is being built, even more than most of us realize, by consuming everyone else’s creative work with no compensation. It’s less ‘thought’ than more and more refined statistical associations between different words and word patterns. And that’s to build products that will be privately owned and sold back to us. Again, predatory and illiberal … in important ways likely illegal.
