"The process of evolution is very slow... the rate of technological change has been supersonic. Our biology simply doesn't have the time to respond and so we are no longer well adapted for the world that our own hands have created...and probably never will again."
AI is unlike every previous labour-saving technology because higher-order thought is unlike any kind of physical drudgery. It’s the highest calling of what it is to be human. It means something different to give that up.
The one parallel I would draw is not to the butter churn or the washing machine, but rather to the infinite feed of digital addiction that our modern digital tech has also created. (Good timing: Haidt’s blog literally had a post by Courtwright yesterday on Limbic Capitalism which is his term for the addiction industry.) The world got a taste of what’s coming with infinite custom-generated content when Grok allowed porn generation for several months. The addiction it created is unsettling. People talking about gooning for 10, 12 straight hours. Same with gambling (though porn is worse). Makes us into beasts.
If being disenfranchised means being denied the potential for earning self worth in society, then I’d say those graduates instinctively know AI threatens to disenfranchise them. A lucky few may succeed, but the majority will struggle to find value. My guess is that’s their fear.
AI could be great...for some things, just like the internet and social media. Instead, humanity is already finding ways to make it a greed-promoting, intelligence-destroying disaster.
Great piece! AI is going to flip the entire world on its head. Like the pre 1900’s those who actually do physical things/build things/fix things/sell things will be valued and those higher order ‘intellectual’ thinking/university jobs will be worth very little. Those lowly trades will make money. The problem is, the barriers to entry for physical work are low (hence why it has been paid less for the last 125 years), so even those occupations will not be high paying. The job market as we know it is already over, and changing daily. The standard of living that we’ve enjoyed will drop profoundly. It should equilibrate eventually but the transition will be awful.
By coincidence, CBC's "The Current" aired an interview this morning with Cal Newport about the trashing of our attention span, and whose March 27 article in the New York Times also addresses this subject. In his interview, he bemoaned our passive acceptance of the latest technological depredations on our lives and minds.
He also noted that we could be witnessing the first stirrings of resistance to AI and all the other stultifying tools being forced on us and which leave us no choice but to adapt to them. In addition to the recent jeering of tone-deaf commencement addresses of complacent AI cheerleaders, there are growing signs of young people seeking out analog activities where they leave their phones at the door.
Maybe AI will swamp many or even most of our young people. But I believe there are enough kids out there who know at the core of their being that technology is harming them deeply, and they are no longer willing to accept it passively.
After all, if each of us knows intuitively that technology is degrading our humanity, then it’s up to each of us to push back against its encroachments in our own lives.
“The human condition is such that pain and effort are not just symptoms which can be removed without changing life itself; they are the modes in which life itself, together with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt. For mortals, the easy life of the gods would be a lifeless life.” – Hannah Arendt
A perceptive take on an innovation that, like most of them do, is bound to have the defects of its virtues. On the one hand, being able to input search terms online that can retrieve not just a solution set of records containing those terms but—miraculously and unprecedentedly—judgments, is a fantastic aid to research. On the other, while a philosophy major I did enjoy the reading challenge presented by books in which an argument may require ten or fifteen pages to properly unfold itself, with no wasted words (as in Husserl's Logical Investigations, for example); and undeniably I felt a sense of achievement when graduate school essays my unaided brain had laboured to produce were rewarded with an A++, and lauded for their perceptiveness and originality.
ChatGPT is seductive, though. Exploring ideas with it is like talking with a best friend who's the equivalent of ten professors rolled into one, understands you perfectly, and seizes the point immediately. No more frustrating, circular, 'talking past each other' pseudo-conversations; just joint, relevant, illuminating reconnoitering of territories that can actually be manufactured as you proceed. For older individuals like me, who already have good reading backgrounds in literature and intellectual history, and a lifetime of thinking for ourselves behind us, being able to partner with AI is an enticing prospect. As a retired reference librarian, how could I not be excited by the quantum leap forward in information retrieval that LLMs represent?
I'm in no position to have an opinion about what the impact on younger people of being able to exploit such partnerships is likely to be. I understand the grounds of Mr. Potter's apprehensions, and he's given us considerable food for thought here. It's surely possible, though, that as with previous innovations some individuals will benefit from this one more than others, and in ways even the most far-sighted won't foresee. Every step into the future is a step into the unknown; maybe the neural substrate laid down in some brains through judicious partnership with AI will result in achievements and a clarity of thinking sufficient to make today's top intellectuals envious.
Frightening to think that there is something coming that may well and truly replace the human mind. While it may produce awe inspiring things, who will you applaud for the product? To me it has a counterfeit feeling. Think Aristotle, Michelangelo, Leonardo with a computer and a CAD program.
I agree with paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi:
"The process of evolution is very slow... the rate of technological change has been supersonic. Our biology simply doesn't have the time to respond and so we are no longer well adapted for the world that our own hands have created...and probably never will again."
10/10, no notes. Banger article.
AI is unlike every previous labour-saving technology because higher-order thought is unlike any kind of physical drudgery. It’s the highest calling of what it is to be human. It means something different to give that up.
The one parallel I would draw is not to the butter churn or the washing machine, but rather to the infinite feed of digital addiction that our modern digital tech has also created. (Good timing: Haidt’s blog literally had a post by Courtwright yesterday on Limbic Capitalism which is his term for the addiction industry.) The world got a taste of what’s coming with infinite custom-generated content when Grok allowed porn generation for several months. The addiction it created is unsettling. People talking about gooning for 10, 12 straight hours. Same with gambling (though porn is worse). Makes us into beasts.
If being disenfranchised means being denied the potential for earning self worth in society, then I’d say those graduates instinctively know AI threatens to disenfranchise them. A lucky few may succeed, but the majority will struggle to find value. My guess is that’s their fear.
AI could be great...for some things, just like the internet and social media. Instead, humanity is already finding ways to make it a greed-promoting, intelligence-destroying disaster.
Solid article. It's what I have been saying for awhile now, except not as well.
Great piece! AI is going to flip the entire world on its head. Like the pre 1900’s those who actually do physical things/build things/fix things/sell things will be valued and those higher order ‘intellectual’ thinking/university jobs will be worth very little. Those lowly trades will make money. The problem is, the barriers to entry for physical work are low (hence why it has been paid less for the last 125 years), so even those occupations will not be high paying. The job market as we know it is already over, and changing daily. The standard of living that we’ve enjoyed will drop profoundly. It should equilibrate eventually but the transition will be awful.
By coincidence, CBC's "The Current" aired an interview this morning with Cal Newport about the trashing of our attention span, and whose March 27 article in the New York Times also addresses this subject. In his interview, he bemoaned our passive acceptance of the latest technological depredations on our lives and minds.
He also noted that we could be witnessing the first stirrings of resistance to AI and all the other stultifying tools being forced on us and which leave us no choice but to adapt to them. In addition to the recent jeering of tone-deaf commencement addresses of complacent AI cheerleaders, there are growing signs of young people seeking out analog activities where they leave their phones at the door.
Maybe AI will swamp many or even most of our young people. But I believe there are enough kids out there who know at the core of their being that technology is harming them deeply, and they are no longer willing to accept it passively.
After all, if each of us knows intuitively that technology is degrading our humanity, then it’s up to each of us to push back against its encroachments in our own lives.
“The human condition is such that pain and effort are not just symptoms which can be removed without changing life itself; they are the modes in which life itself, together with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt. For mortals, the easy life of the gods would be a lifeless life.” – Hannah Arendt
A perceptive take on an innovation that, like most of them do, is bound to have the defects of its virtues. On the one hand, being able to input search terms online that can retrieve not just a solution set of records containing those terms but—miraculously and unprecedentedly—judgments, is a fantastic aid to research. On the other, while a philosophy major I did enjoy the reading challenge presented by books in which an argument may require ten or fifteen pages to properly unfold itself, with no wasted words (as in Husserl's Logical Investigations, for example); and undeniably I felt a sense of achievement when graduate school essays my unaided brain had laboured to produce were rewarded with an A++, and lauded for their perceptiveness and originality.
ChatGPT is seductive, though. Exploring ideas with it is like talking with a best friend who's the equivalent of ten professors rolled into one, understands you perfectly, and seizes the point immediately. No more frustrating, circular, 'talking past each other' pseudo-conversations; just joint, relevant, illuminating reconnoitering of territories that can actually be manufactured as you proceed. For older individuals like me, who already have good reading backgrounds in literature and intellectual history, and a lifetime of thinking for ourselves behind us, being able to partner with AI is an enticing prospect. As a retired reference librarian, how could I not be excited by the quantum leap forward in information retrieval that LLMs represent?
I'm in no position to have an opinion about what the impact on younger people of being able to exploit such partnerships is likely to be. I understand the grounds of Mr. Potter's apprehensions, and he's given us considerable food for thought here. It's surely possible, though, that as with previous innovations some individuals will benefit from this one more than others, and in ways even the most far-sighted won't foresee. Every step into the future is a step into the unknown; maybe the neural substrate laid down in some brains through judicious partnership with AI will result in achievements and a clarity of thinking sufficient to make today's top intellectuals envious.
Frightening to think that there is something coming that may well and truly replace the human mind. While it may produce awe inspiring things, who will you applaud for the product? To me it has a counterfeit feeling. Think Aristotle, Michelangelo, Leonardo with a computer and a CAD program.
Darn. I was going to create my first ever Substack post, using AI, but now the cat is well and truly out of the bag.
As M. Poirot would say, it’s back to ‘the little grey cells’.