AI sucks. Hating it is not enough. | Shaping Systems
I do not want to be writing this essay.<br>I, like you, am sick of think pieces and discourse about AI.<br>And yet I have seen my communities, my friends, tearing each other apart for months: bitterly divided on both the bare facts and the correct response to AI.<br>And I, I feel I must write on it1: in my own voice, in my own name, in public.
I, and others like me, have been accused of ignoring the moral questions around AI;<br>placing them to the side in the same fashion as those who want “politics” out of open source, out of science, out of games.<br>That, unfortunately, is not true.<br>I cannot get those questions out of my head.
Dear AI hater, we are fighting for the same cause.<br>I know you may not believe me.<br>I know I will likely fail to convince you.<br>But please, please listen2.<br>I cannot do this alone.
In brief: AI risks terrible harm to the world. And yet we cannot uninvent it, we cannot boycott it out of existence, we can barely regulate it in any way that matters.<br>The urge to do so is understandable, laudable and one that, on some level, I share.<br>The problem is that while these things might help, they will not work.<br>We must navigate the facts as they stand, not as we wish they were,<br>and set our sights much higher, even when it feels impossible.
I know this sounds like that refrain you have heard so many boosters sneer3 in the past: “AI is inevitable; get on board or get left behind”.<br>Your skepticism is warranted, and I shared it.<br>But the things I have seen and heard, with my own eyes and ears,<br>tell me that something very real is coming.<br>I must warn you, even if I fear you will not believe me.
These tidings should not ring triumphant; instead, I wish to impart upon you a bitter hope.<br>There is a dark shape on the horizon that we must not ignore.<br>We must fight to shape the future in this time of monsters,<br>even if we cannot uninvent AI.<br>We must adapt, even if we do not need to adopt.
When I have made these arguments in the past, those who do not know me presume that I am a booster, a shill, a fascist, a fool.<br>It is true: I am a technologist.<br>A programmer, a scientist: fascinated by statistics and machine learning, experimental design and automation.<br>A transhumanist4, who sees glimmers of personhood in animals and machines,<br>who wishes everyone could freely shape their own bodies, who wants to expand our moral circle in ways that seem heretical.
And yet I am an ecologist, an environmentalist.<br>I gave my whole life, my wealth, my health, my future to saving the earth.<br>To fighting climate change and promoting cycling, to understanding the beautiful world around us.<br>And when I could no longer walk that path,<br>when I became so sick that I thought I would never again walk through the forests,<br>marvelling at every fallen log and mushroom,<br>I tried again.<br>I found a new path — of machines and code; of desperate survival and brutal compromises; of hard-fought independence through careful reliance5.<br>And when I could, I gave again: sacrificing years of time and embarrassing amounts of income to give back to the commons, in the form of open source.
I have only one life to live.<br>I’ve always known it would be given in service6.
Do not tell me that I do not fight for a brighter future.<br>The world is not so simple.
Footnotes
It would not be my own voice if it did not have far too many words. There are too many branching lines, too many holes to plug, and I will, this once, commit the cardinal sin of persuasive writing: arguing defensively. ↩
Grant us your charity, as we grant charity to those who trespass against us. ↩
That’s negative polarization for you. Surprisingly powerful stuff. Be careful with what you say, and with what you consume. You never know how it might change you. ↩
Eclipse Phase was formative in my vision of transhumanism. Technology as transformative liberation; not a technofascist project to create a master race. It, like “liberal”, is a charged and complex term, but I refuse to let others take those identities — or the em dash — away from me. ↩
The em-dashes in this essay, and every word you read here, are certified human-produced — copy-pasted from Google the good-old-fashioned way, and typed with my little meat fingers on a mechanical keyboard. ↩
“I’ve sacrificed everything. What have you given?”. Illidan was kinda spittin’… ↩
AI sucks
AI, as it is wrought, is an unfolding disaster.<br>The worst people in the world are riding it to power.<br>It empowers terrifyingly accurate surveillance on an unprecedented scale1.<br>The tools that AI companies glibly sell are destroying entire industries,<br>threatening to displace billions of workers with a willful disregard for their well-being or future.<br>Built on the backs of exploited labor and creators that they will never credit,<br>the machines serve as perfect twin engines for propaganda and censorship.<br>As we use them, our skills degrade, fostering an ever-so-monetizable reliance.<br>And it all consumes massive quantities of...