A trip to the museum

At the recommendation of Mary and also, in absentia, Natalie, Graham and I took a trip to the NC Museum of Art today and took in a couple of temporary exhibitions that are about to fly the coop. We were not the only people to have the idea of going to the museum on a cold day, so it was rather crowded. Some thoughts:

• Venice and the Ottoman Empire. From this exhibition we learned that the two empires who were navals in the Eastern Mediterranean for a long time but with peaks in the 14th-17th centuries alternately fought against and traded with one another. We also learned that people from both places as well as contemporary bourgeoisie like things that are exotic and luxurious.
• The Samurai. There was a lot of detail about the armor of the Samurai but I've never really been interested in that and I'm still not. There was a good timeline of Japanese history. The most intriguing thing was a discussion of different variants of Buddhism, a topic I know almost nothing about. It would be good to take a course on the history and development of Buddhism

Afterwards we sauntered over to the main building to check out the permanent collection, which I hadn't had a look at for a long time. It's a pretty good collection with some interesting stuff, the most compelling of which that we saw today is perhaps this painting of "The Worship of the Golden Calf" by Jan Steen.

To refresh your memory, the Jews got caught up worshipping a Golden Calf while Moses was up on the mountain picking up the 10 Commandments. It was not their most shining moment. Moreover, it sets up one of the recurring themes of the Old Testament, in which the Israelites again and again establish  hill shrines to one deity or another and then get their ass handed to them by Jahweh in a battle or a plague. It was a lesson that took a while to internalize. 

So this whole Golden Calf incident was not a shining moment for the Jews. But Steen makes it look not so bad here. People are dancing around, having fun. Yes you can also kind of tell that they are being a little naughty, and you can imagine some prim Dutch burgers looking at this and sensing that something is not right, but it's also not all bad. It has that Rabelaisian carnival charm. It's not unlike mercantile Renaissance porn. It's not like Brueggels or later Hogarth where the impropriety fairly flies off the canvass at you. 

Alignment against Apocalypse

Returning to the AI theme for a second, Mollick rightly points out in his book how important it will be for AIs to be fundamentally aligned in their values with us to safeguard us against the most apocalyptic scenarios envisioned by the many prophets of AI doom. I don't think he's altogether wrong.

The problem is that we humans are ourselves far from aligned in our values. Both between and within societies there's a broad gamut of opinions on the relative import of freedom and basic economic security, for example. Lots of people in the West see no contradiction between the two and think that freedom and general wealth production are highly correlated. Elsewhere in the world the link between the two seems far less clear. Even within the United States, there are plenty of people who don't see the connection and cry bullshit.

What we lack most sorely is credible leadership to build consensus. Until we get that, who the hell knows how AIs will set priorities as they keep getting smarter?