As we soldier ever deeper into Trump 2.0, sometimes it feels like years already (and his people surely want us to feel that), I can't help to ponder the very long view of things. What we need. What we lack.
I know I have inveighed at times about the shortcomings of the technocratic super-elite and I know that I am not alone in that. Many are deeply concerned about the excess of power concentrated in the hands of the super-wealthy, especially Musk right now but to a lesser extent Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc. Yet we all nonetheless continue to apotheosize them and their wealth and others like them. In general money and the having of it seems too much everyon'e goal.
But here I am barely two paragraphs in, already digressing. The even bigger problem is that if AI is going to be capable of doing so many things in the future, if it will take over so many forms of intellectual labor, how will we guide it? When push comes to shove, we need AI to be able not just to do things, but to not do things in the absence of certainty, particularly where there are ethical and moral questions involved.
All in all I think this argues that people should be studying, thinking and arguing more and more about ethical questions. In a deep way. When I was at the art of the samurai exhibit at the NC Museum of Art a month and change back with Graham and there was discussion on the little cards about the various schools of thought within Buddhism I realized I knew almost nothing about the evolution of and differences within Buddhism. I have incrementally better knowledge of the history of Islam and Judaism, and somewhat better knowledge of the history of Christianity, etc. All that goes back to college days. I've never read William James's Varieties of Religious Experience though it has been sitting on my shelf forever.
These are important topics and we should be encouraging their study, rather than telling all our kids to learn to code or weld. Also Plato, Aristotle, all of it. Everybody should have some baseline appreciation of the complexity of ethics, though, I guess, in our own way, we all do and we all know that we will never arrive at perfect unanimity on questions of good, evil, and what is to be done next.
But will AI know that it doesn't know? Will it recognize the boundary between a practical question and an ethical one?
3 comments:
"Yet we all nonetheless continue to apotheosize them and their wealth and others like them." -- I would gently push back against this! I think there are many many people who are not apotheosizing their wealth. - your daughter
Ah, my daughter, you are right. This is an instance where my typing too fast and not going back and reading what I wrote leads me into saying things wrong. I too don't think super highly of any of the tech overlords, though Bill Gates has done a pretty good job later in life of thinking about how to give away money and Jeff Bezos has a good morning routine, at least to hear him tell it. Normally I would go back and edit out my error but since you have corrected me I will let it stand.
Should have said "all too many continue to apotheosize them" or something like that.
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