Faster than the Speed of Reason
We hear a lot about AI these days. Much of it is wrong. Much of the rest is misleading. Time to prioritize educating ourselves.
I know that social media is a place where people come to promote their ignorance and prejudices, but still there are few subjects here that I see that are more distorted by both than AI.
The boatload of technologies and applications that get described as “AI” are oversimplified, misunderstood, misrepresented, vilified, and hyped to a degree that they are unrecognizable—especially to those of us who are immersed in it and what’s really going on daily.
Some AI-linked technologies are promising, some are already producing great results and benefits, some are worrisome, some are in the distant future and some will never happen.
Vast machinery has been created to spin vapor into bullshit and to cover up very real risks. Big audiences promote binary perspectives in the vein of Orwell’s “four legs good, two legs bad” false dichotomy. (Even after I posted some notes for this column on Bluesky, I was inundated with responses asking how I could possibly defend AI which, in their eyes, is fundamentally evil. Which is ludicrous and sure does echo the howls of Luddites from generation to generation.)
One particularly egregious area of confusion is linked to the fact that the distance between AGI and the proliferating applied “AI” products and services with which most people are familiar—including chatbots—is immense.
That said, the gap between what we know and have today and what we don’t know and can’t imagine about tomorrow is even larger. The risk of planetary annihilation is overstated (greatly), and that of AI-related technologies creating labor market disruptions and growing inequality is understated. AI’s promise for creating improving the quality of life for many including in the emerging world…is also not appreciated as it should be.
