The title on my blog posting today was stimulated by a column by Michelle Goldberg, who writes for The New York Times. My title, implicitly, accuses Sam Altman of "bullshit," to spell it out for you. That's Sam Altman, pictured above.
I, personally, think that it is pretty clear that the deployment of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, as that deployment is currenty underway, raises hugely important questions. I also think that these questions are properly catagorized as "political" questions, and they are of consumate importance. Frequent readers of my blog will not be surprised by this assertion. Senator Bernie Sanders spells out a number of these political questions in the video below:
Michelle Goldberg, in the column I have linked in my first paragraph, also spells out important reasons to question the deployment of AI. Her column focuses on "which party" will lead anti-AI efforts, but her concern about that question stems from Golberg's contention (agreeing with Sanders) that we are "sleepwalking into a dystopia that any rational person can see from miles away."
If you haven't spotted that upcoming dystopia yourself, do listen to what Senator Sanders has to say in his video, and read Goldberg's column, outlining her thoughts (The Times' paywall permitting, of course).
As Goldberg properly notes, AI "obviously has beneficial uses." However, she says, "the list of things it is ruining is long." Goldberg's list of things being ruined by AI includes (1) Education; (2) Employment; (3) The environment; (4) Privacy, and (5) "Our remaining sense of collective reality." Again, Goldberg and Sanders are both pointing to REAL threats and concerns.
And what about Sam Altman? Altman began his involvement with AI by helping to set up a nonprofit corporation dedicated to preventing the potentially negative impacts that AI might have. Time having passed, Altman has transmuted his nonprofit into a for-profit company, and he is a "booster." Here is how Goldberg describes the trajectory of Altman's "changing views" (emphasis added):
In “Empire of A.I.,” Karen Hao’s book about Altman’s company, she quotes an email he wrote to Elon Musk in 2015. “Been thinking a lot about whether it’s possible to stop humanity from developing A.I.,” wrote Altman. “I think the answer is almost definitely not.” Given that, he proposed a “Manhattan Project for A.I.,” so that the dangerous technology would belong to a nonprofit supportive of aggressive government regulation.
This year Altman restructured OpenAI into a for-profit company. Like other tech barons, he has allied himself with Donald Trump, who recently signed an executive order attempting to override state A.I. regulations.
Goldberg's column goes on to raise a question about "what we get in return for this systematic degradation of much of the stuff that makes life worth living," and in looking for an answer to that question, Goldberg quotes Sam Altman, directly:
“The rate of new wonders being achieved will be immense,” he wrote in June. “It’s hard to even imagine today what we will have discovered by 2035; maybe we will go from solving high-energy physics one year to beginning space colonization the next year.”
I am always promoting "self-government," which means that we, the ordinary people of the nation, who will be directly affected by what happens, should be having a direct impact on that "what happens" question. We should be "running the place," not acting like spectators at a tennis match. That idea about self-government is what got us started almost 250 years ago.
To be in charge, we need to confront the hard questions, and then figure out what to do.
Bullshit does not assist us!
Image Credits:
(2) - https://youtu.be/K3qS345gAWI?si=1CYaM9PqZliBFa3A
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