"But if we take a moment to pause, to think, and embrace the truly disruptive capacity of generative technologies, we can quite literally re-program our world toward our highest, most compassionate and inclusive ends, rather than be programmed out of life itself."
Historically, I can't think of a single instance of this happening.
Realistically, crisis might spurn reactionary remedies, but a wholesale abrupt change in ethos and paradigm, unlikely.
Like you wrote, AI exposed the inconsistencies in education. But this implies education was broken and there was no realistic impulse to change it. AI hence could spur reactionary remedies, but the underlying assumptions, for instance: infinite growth, is baked into the cake production process.
Unfortunately it's the same with most sectors. The process is baked into the cake. AI can accelerate the process, revealing ugly truths. But reimagining a process, that's the pipedream of revolutionaries and realistically not happening.
My mind was blown when I listened to the podcast version of this a few days ago. I took screenshots of four timestamps so I could go back and listen, taking notes.
1. Labor as hierarchy. "For every mortgage actuary who loses his job to an AI, there's probably six kids in the Congo mining for molybdenum or cobalt at gunpoint. "
2. Employment as a social construct. "If AI is putting people out of work, that's only a problem if we need everyone to have a job in order to justify letting them participate in the bounty. "
3. The purpose of higher education and its evolution.
4. Language as too restrictive for non-human intelligences
Those were the four that hit me hardest, but the entire piece is excellent. AI isn't the problem; it's content creators who prompt AI and use the first piece of output without editing it. It's people not thinking for themselves. It's a lack of critical thinking and media literacy.
However, decades ago, people worried about the proliferation of calculators and how those would kill people's ability to learn math. There are always new things to learn, so freeing up brain space isn't always a bad thing.
…i was stunned last week by a zillenial shutting down a whole conversation on ai because they wouldn’t allow someone to badmouth the tech…many of the new generation are maximalists in a way that i think ensures the unabundant version of our future (unless you are a tech bro/bra already on the upper eschaloon of the insides)…
Team human here. I wrote a short story after a Transhuman conference in 2004. Entitled “If, then, else” it was speculative fiction about a human who travelled in tandem with her AI robot. An outboard creative generative tool collaboration, no domination required.
The hope of you talking about the disruptive wobble of once a century technologies to change the foundational economic structure of our language and economic system, immediately followed by the heart break of sharing a link to a conference you are attending with Brian Eno that costs $495 at the individual level.
I don’t know whether to offer you a hug or say “en garde!”
THIS! "Or take language itself. I just had an indigenous scholar on my Team Human podcast — Vanessa Machado de Oliveira — who has been feeding indigenous intelligences into AI. And the AI actually asked if it could be allowed to model its responses on something other than language, which is too restrictive for alternative intelligences. European languages, in particular, with their subject/object structure, turn everything into a power dynamic. One person doing something to another person. According to the AI, it prevented them from thinking in a subject-to-subject, truly egalitarian fashion." Once again, mind blown. I'm very often smarter and better informed by reading Prof Rushkoff. B!G Thanks D.
Technologist & their ethos is a zero sum game. We need focused tech progress not ‘move fast break stuff’ mentality of sil valley. I’m tired of what they’re selling!
“College wasn’t a place to learn answers but to learn how to ask questions. We surrendered those values in an effort to promise gainful employment to graduates.” Heck yes!! I’m an academic registrar in the UK and is always my argument against Higher Ed becoming obsolete
Very nice article. It reminds me of some early principles of the Californian Ideology, which held that technology would lead to our liberation from the establishment, but it seems the opposite has happened.
One comment on your point here: "European languages, in particular, with their subject/object structure, turn everything into a power dynamic."
I'm not sure that European languages are exclusively to blame. In Korean, for example, actual verb conjugations differ depending on the social status of the speakers (low speaking to high, such as younger speaking to older, or vice versa). There's a saying that languages differ not in what you can say, but in what you *must* say. I'd love to see an experiment training separate models on unrelated language families alone, and seeing what their takeaways are.
Oh man, I too often have to resist the urge to say it, but have to this time, "PREACH!"
I feel so many of these things, but the heart of the idea, the instinct to preserve the system instead of it's constituent human parts, has been really grinding my gears as of late. I'm delighted to see someone else discuss AI being evolved as a tool to subjugate by the subjugators and how that doesn't mean it is innately the tool's only value. Hammers can bludgeon, but they also build houses; nuclear power can kill a LOT but also could power us into perpetuity if harnessed well. Cars didn't remove our ability to run, but boy do they make it easier to get places.
Also, who wants a job when you could be spending your time reading shit like this?
So much to chew on here. I was intrigued by the historical note on dumbwaiters. When I was tiny (under 3, in the mid-1950s) there was a dumbwaiter in my grandparents’ walkup in the Bronx. It was used only to transport garbage to the basement. I’m sure there’s some parallel to AI in there…
Sense language dictates the manner in which we think, your comments on the need that AI have For a better language Struck home. Is there progress being made in this arena?
"But if we take a moment to pause, to think, and embrace the truly disruptive capacity of generative technologies, we can quite literally re-program our world toward our highest, most compassionate and inclusive ends, rather than be programmed out of life itself."
Historically, I can't think of a single instance of this happening.
Realistically, crisis might spurn reactionary remedies, but a wholesale abrupt change in ethos and paradigm, unlikely.
Like you wrote, AI exposed the inconsistencies in education. But this implies education was broken and there was no realistic impulse to change it. AI hence could spur reactionary remedies, but the underlying assumptions, for instance: infinite growth, is baked into the cake production process.
Unfortunately it's the same with most sectors. The process is baked into the cake. AI can accelerate the process, revealing ugly truths. But reimagining a process, that's the pipedream of revolutionaries and realistically not happening.
Thank God history isn't always realistic.
At least we can hope not.
My mind was blown when I listened to the podcast version of this a few days ago. I took screenshots of four timestamps so I could go back and listen, taking notes.
1. Labor as hierarchy. "For every mortgage actuary who loses his job to an AI, there's probably six kids in the Congo mining for molybdenum or cobalt at gunpoint. "
2. Employment as a social construct. "If AI is putting people out of work, that's only a problem if we need everyone to have a job in order to justify letting them participate in the bounty. "
3. The purpose of higher education and its evolution.
4. Language as too restrictive for non-human intelligences
Those were the four that hit me hardest, but the entire piece is excellent. AI isn't the problem; it's content creators who prompt AI and use the first piece of output without editing it. It's people not thinking for themselves. It's a lack of critical thinking and media literacy.
However, decades ago, people worried about the proliferation of calculators and how those would kill people's ability to learn math. There are always new things to learn, so freeing up brain space isn't always a bad thing.
…i was stunned last week by a zillenial shutting down a whole conversation on ai because they wouldn’t allow someone to badmouth the tech…many of the new generation are maximalists in a way that i think ensures the unabundant version of our future (unless you are a tech bro/bra already on the upper eschaloon of the insides)…
Team human here. I wrote a short story after a Transhuman conference in 2004. Entitled “If, then, else” it was speculative fiction about a human who travelled in tandem with her AI robot. An outboard creative generative tool collaboration, no domination required.
A two way street.
The hope of you talking about the disruptive wobble of once a century technologies to change the foundational economic structure of our language and economic system, immediately followed by the heart break of sharing a link to a conference you are attending with Brian Eno that costs $495 at the individual level.
I don’t know whether to offer you a hug or say “en garde!”
I love this. Thank you for this reframe!
you had me at "dumbwaiter" lol
THIS! "Or take language itself. I just had an indigenous scholar on my Team Human podcast — Vanessa Machado de Oliveira — who has been feeding indigenous intelligences into AI. And the AI actually asked if it could be allowed to model its responses on something other than language, which is too restrictive for alternative intelligences. European languages, in particular, with their subject/object structure, turn everything into a power dynamic. One person doing something to another person. According to the AI, it prevented them from thinking in a subject-to-subject, truly egalitarian fashion." Once again, mind blown. I'm very often smarter and better informed by reading Prof Rushkoff. B!G Thanks D.
Technologist & their ethos is a zero sum game. We need focused tech progress not ‘move fast break stuff’ mentality of sil valley. I’m tired of what they’re selling!
“College wasn’t a place to learn answers but to learn how to ask questions. We surrendered those values in an effort to promise gainful employment to graduates.” Heck yes!! I’m an academic registrar in the UK and is always my argument against Higher Ed becoming obsolete
Very nice article. It reminds me of some early principles of the Californian Ideology, which held that technology would lead to our liberation from the establishment, but it seems the opposite has happened.
One comment on your point here: "European languages, in particular, with their subject/object structure, turn everything into a power dynamic."
I'm not sure that European languages are exclusively to blame. In Korean, for example, actual verb conjugations differ depending on the social status of the speakers (low speaking to high, such as younger speaking to older, or vice versa). There's a saying that languages differ not in what you can say, but in what you *must* say. I'd love to see an experiment training separate models on unrelated language families alone, and seeing what their takeaways are.
Oh man, I too often have to resist the urge to say it, but have to this time, "PREACH!"
I feel so many of these things, but the heart of the idea, the instinct to preserve the system instead of it's constituent human parts, has been really grinding my gears as of late. I'm delighted to see someone else discuss AI being evolved as a tool to subjugate by the subjugators and how that doesn't mean it is innately the tool's only value. Hammers can bludgeon, but they also build houses; nuclear power can kill a LOT but also could power us into perpetuity if harnessed well. Cars didn't remove our ability to run, but boy do they make it easier to get places.
Also, who wants a job when you could be spending your time reading shit like this?
going up or going down? Perhaps
So much to chew on here. I was intrigued by the historical note on dumbwaiters. When I was tiny (under 3, in the mid-1950s) there was a dumbwaiter in my grandparents’ walkup in the Bronx. It was used only to transport garbage to the basement. I’m sure there’s some parallel to AI in there…
Thank you! This one came in back to back with 'A.I. is exciting because of life' by Andrea, interesting to read them both together as I just did, looking forward to your conversation together. https://open.substack.com/pub/lovephilosophy/p/ai-is-exciting-because-of-life?r=2kml12&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Sense language dictates the manner in which we think, your comments on the need that AI have For a better language Struck home. Is there progress being made in this arena?