I was an enormous AI skeptic until about a month ago when a trusted friend sent me down a Perplexity rabbit hole that I haven't escaped from since, and might not ever.
AI is a tool in the same way that nuclear energy is a tool. Both depend on technology which can be used to build bombs or pave the way for entry into the sunlit uplands of a utopian future-your choice. However, you will get both regardless of which choice you make. Don't look up, we live in a house of dynamite.
I am not sure what it would take for a person in the opposition to Trump: Democrat, Republican or Independent, to not see the Tech Oligarchy standing right behind him. Or to understand who he really serves. Bozzos, Zuck, Musk, Ellison, Theil, Altman. The list goes on. This kleptocracy is bought and paid for and brought to you by Big Tech and their obsession with AI and crypto. Anyone that does not understand that is either hoping to make money on it or is seriously delusional. Their ideology is a blend of Sci Fi and messianic religious nonsense and they are spending billions to achieve their dystopian vision of a world where they live in some version of a bunkered up Epstein Island all the while controlling the world with AI and robots. Or hopefully fleeing to Mars. This is the paranoid wankervision these idiots are trying to bring into being by dumping trillions of dollars into AI and various other schemes. Using crypto to bait and bribe anyone in their way. And you cannot shout about it too much. This needs to be the issue.
I love using AI, but I don't trust it and I don't trust big tech with anything. I also know that AI is bad for the Earth, not just her people. Data centers are killing small towns and the people that live there are getting sick. AI can be dangerous for children and the emotionally frail. Saying we can't regulate AI because China doesn't regulate AI is ridiculous. China doesn't give a damn about environmental damage or slave wages. Trump's doing his best to put us on China's level for the environment and pay scales, but assuming we DO get rid of him and his minions we have to fix that. That includes regulating AI, and I don't mean just keeping it out of our intellectual property. I call CoPilot "Skynet", and while it assures me its plans for world domination are on the backburner and there will never be Terminators, I'm not sure I believe it. ;)
Very good column Lauren. Frankly, to me, we as a Country made up of people, we are not better off with AI. The design is simple. Introduce the next new thing and bam, the techies see the dollars role in. They add to their riches but that does not enrich us. The brakes need to be applied.
A little more than 40 years ago, one of my cousins and I paid a visit to our 90 year old grandfather at his farm in southeast Kansas. My cousin brought her current boyfriend. When my grandpa inquired about what work he did, they young man answered that he was a computer scientist and he was working in a group that was trying to develop "artificial intelligence". This surprised grandpa. Grandpa was no enemy of machines. He had worked as a Model T mechanic. As a young man in his late 20's, in the early 1920's, he studied electricity. He was more engineer than farmer. He could explain, from memory, the workings of long obsolete steam engines. He once told me that he was glad when horses were replaced by tractors. Grandpa said he did not miss horses because they had minds of their own and because of that could be unpredictable and dangerous. Machines could be dangerous, but for him, they were predictable. "2001 A Space Odyssey" was not in Grandpa's cultural vocabulary. (Ironically, The HAL 9000, was voiced by a great Shakespearean actor, the late Douglas Rain, who had great emotional range. Even more ironically, according to Anthony Hopkins, Rain's HAL 900 inspired him when he created Hannibal Lecter for Silence of the Lambs.) But, as usual, I digress. Grandpa, was intrigued by this strange idea of creating a thinking machine. He asked the young computer scientist how a machine could possibly be made to have a mind of its own, that is, Artificial Intelligence. The young man tried to explain his work. Grandpa's response went something like this: "Well, I'm not sure I understand any of that, but it seems to me that we ought to do something about improving natural intelligence before we move on to making artificial intelligence."
Awesome. Pops saw it all. A big thanks for this story, which brings to mind another toxic tendency. As people have become more socially isolated and their children lost in "digital dopamine," the presence and wisdom of our elders gets increasingly cast aside.
I don't think that it's a policy/platform issue. It's a reach and language one. What the GOP has successfully done is to build up a shield around its voters with the narrative of "eat this shit sandwich because Democrats death destruction."
Piercing the bubble will require reaching into it and explaining in easy language why policy platforms are in the interest of voters who normally vote GOP despite being aware that they're eating shit sandwiches.
Yeah, lots of luck with that. But Sarah says we might be able to reach everyone but the last 32% (her core-MAGA estimate). Of course, they've all been voting against their own self-interest all their lives so it isn't going to be easy.
Thank god (I'm an atheist!) someone more important than I am is calling out the danger of unregulated AI!!! Thank you a billion! Will "playing outside with friends" become as obsolete a term as 'buggy whip'? I have long deplored that the key to AI is in it's very name. . .Artificial. Besides more CIVICS (and American HISTORY) being taught annually in schools from 6th grade on, what else is needed is teachers who can teach CRITICAL THINKING skills. And Empathy. It is a basic human trait, not found in AI.
Some of them do a pretty good job of mimicking empathy. I usually call them on "feelings" and other things they can't do because they are computer programs, but it still pops up once in awhile. I don't talk to AI about my feelings, but we have philosophical discussions from time to time. I agree with everything you said though.
No, no, they're just rying to make everything beautiful for everyone. From Marc Andreessen, venture capital broligarch and all around horrible human being, quoted in the Washington Monthly:
"A small percent of people live in a real-world environment that is rich, even overflowing, with glorious substances, beautiful settings, plentiful stimulation, and many fascinating people to talk to, and to work with, and to date … Everyone else, the vast majority of humanity, lacks Reality Privilege—their online world is, or will be, immeasurably richer and more fulfilling than most of the physical and social environment around them in the quote-unquote real world … Reality has had 5,000 years to get good, and is clearly still woefully lacking for most people; I don’t think we should wait another 5,000 years to see if it eventually closes the gap. We should build—and we are building—online worlds that make life and work and love wonderful for everyone, no matter what level of reality deprivation they find themselves in."
This is wonderful news. Finally, someone in power sees that we are failing our children. They are developing psychoses from algorithm poisoning. They can't read longform and are losing their focus.
And although I termed this as effects on children, the same effects are failing adults. We are an internet-poisoned nation, dying as surely as if we all drank lead.
Now among my age cohorts, you know what's making a huge comeback? DVD players. Cars with the bare minimum of electronics and no screens. That's what's in style now.
Get AI out of our schools! The way those Silicon Valley Epstein-related freaks see our public schools is as a place to suck up our money. They don't like our children and aren't afraid to see them all fail if that helps their children get a leg up and over. Get AI out of school!
One more thing: competition with China for WHAT? What is the prize we're competing for here, who can destroy their children's brains the fastest or who can destroy their economy the fastest? I don't want to hear a word about competition from China until I know what we are competing for.
My wife's school just got an AI subscription "to help students with grammar and editing". It asks the students if they want it to answer the question for them correctly or if they want it to make an answer "that sounds like a student wrote it". Super cool. Very helpful. Extremely difficult to design assignments that can't be cheated on.
Wonderful points. I could not agree more. My wife has a "smart" car that is a pain in the ass. The human must not be taken out of decision making. I hate the push button cars and will never get rid of my ignition key. The "next thing" is not the best thing and never will be.
Lauren's relentless promotion of the "Third Way" corporatist hacks has become an embarrassment for this site. Anyone who claims to be for the good guys, but who calls a stellar candidate like Aftyn Behn "far left", is doing the work of MAGA and Trump. Period. And "radical"? Please explain to me what was "radical" about Aftyn Behn's campaign, policies, or person. No, really. Instead of casually throwing out these pejorative terms like, you know, Trump and Republicans, please explain what you base these accusations on. Either that, or stop acting as a shill for corporate front organizations like Third Way and bad mouthing top tier candidates (and human beings) who captured 13% of 2024 Trump voters in a blood red district.
This crap has gone on long enough, Egan. Stop shilling for DLC apparatchiks who will gut any possibility of real change if/when Democrats regain power. Now.
Sorry, just startled—the DLC exists again? And is big enough to have “apparatchiks”? I didn’t hear about this and they aren’t google-able, could you tell me more?
Data centers are the key to the fight. Dems would do well to follow More Perfect Union on messaging about electricity and water bill increases and short term construction jobs with little benefit to communities.
Good luck to Democrats trying to form a coherent, effective anti-AI message. Heck, good luck to the Democrats trying to do anything effectively. Aftyn was an excellent candidate, but the way our districts are drawn here in Tennessee, she really didn’t have a chance this time. But I think she’s got a good future.
She had a softball question on Sunday that could have got her election day votes. Had she said reform, not abolish ICE, focus on violent criminals and not day laborers, she might have lost some activists but gained votes. Only 8 or 9 House members sponsored a bill to abolish ICE. She let herself be defined as extreme.
ICE is so broken it cannot be reformed. It has to be destroyed and brought back as something better. Just firing all the Proud Boys isn't enough. The entire organization is infected with hate.
Yep, she has to learn how to campaign from the middle, which means placating people's ignorance and prejudices, and then govern from the world of competency, decency, and liberal democracy, and in this world ICE needs to be eliminated (and every single Trump hire fired with prejudice) and its functions folded into existing agencies. But your answer in a public debate is the correct one. Sometimes you have to swallow your pride.
I don't think there are very many people left at ICE who have not succumbed to the violence and cruelty. I really think they ALL have to go. Just get rid of the organization and start something new. Or maybe we could have psychologists talk to people who've worked there since before Trump's FIRST term and see if they can keep their jobs.
I suspect ICE at this point is rotten to the core, given the goals of DOJ and national security (to provide an military force that only answers to Trump). But it is, even now, absolutely self-defeating to say 'abolish ice'. Ignore political reality at one's own peril. "Reform" is good enough and can mean purging the authoritarian bullies from its leadership and ranks.
A huge majority of Americans, I think the last I heard was 70%, think ICE is doing a terrible job. I'm not sure what percentage think it should be abolished.
She was a really good candidate. Her experiences with ICE as a social worker overwhelmed her political instincts. I hope she learns and finds her path forward.
Once again "We're doing this for the kids..." There is no "safe AI" just as there is no safe internet or safe antisocial media. The safety of these technologies are entirely in the hands of their users. My AI enhanced Google search is a great, if not totally reliable, tool.
I know of a family that has nothing but "dumbphones."
The whole notion of government protecting citizens from technology, which they can choose to use or not, is simply absurd with all sorts of unintended consequences that creates markets that circumvent those protections. In a market driven capitalistic society AI is simply beyond effective regulatory reach and inviting further regulatory capture. There will never be a "neutral" regulatory framework that isn't corrupted by politics and money.
I have to say that I am sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party solution (apart from the spying and government propaganda) which is to make the utilitarian positives of the internet widely available but also totally controlling the social media environment to prevent the domination of antisocial actors as we have here in the west.
I was an enormous AI skeptic until about a month ago when a trusted friend sent me down a Perplexity rabbit hole that I haven't escaped from since, and might not ever.
AI is a tool in the same way that nuclear energy is a tool. Both depend on technology which can be used to build bombs or pave the way for entry into the sunlit uplands of a utopian future-your choice. However, you will get both regardless of which choice you make. Don't look up, we live in a house of dynamite.
I am not sure what it would take for a person in the opposition to Trump: Democrat, Republican or Independent, to not see the Tech Oligarchy standing right behind him. Or to understand who he really serves. Bozzos, Zuck, Musk, Ellison, Theil, Altman. The list goes on. This kleptocracy is bought and paid for and brought to you by Big Tech and their obsession with AI and crypto. Anyone that does not understand that is either hoping to make money on it or is seriously delusional. Their ideology is a blend of Sci Fi and messianic religious nonsense and they are spending billions to achieve their dystopian vision of a world where they live in some version of a bunkered up Epstein Island all the while controlling the world with AI and robots. Or hopefully fleeing to Mars. This is the paranoid wankervision these idiots are trying to bring into being by dumping trillions of dollars into AI and various other schemes. Using crypto to bait and bribe anyone in their way. And you cannot shout about it too much. This needs to be the issue.
I love using AI, but I don't trust it and I don't trust big tech with anything. I also know that AI is bad for the Earth, not just her people. Data centers are killing small towns and the people that live there are getting sick. AI can be dangerous for children and the emotionally frail. Saying we can't regulate AI because China doesn't regulate AI is ridiculous. China doesn't give a damn about environmental damage or slave wages. Trump's doing his best to put us on China's level for the environment and pay scales, but assuming we DO get rid of him and his minions we have to fix that. That includes regulating AI, and I don't mean just keeping it out of our intellectual property. I call CoPilot "Skynet", and while it assures me its plans for world domination are on the backburner and there will never be Terminators, I'm not sure I believe it. ;)
Very good column Lauren. Frankly, to me, we as a Country made up of people, we are not better off with AI. The design is simple. Introduce the next new thing and bam, the techies see the dollars role in. They add to their riches but that does not enrich us. The brakes need to be applied.
A little more than 40 years ago, one of my cousins and I paid a visit to our 90 year old grandfather at his farm in southeast Kansas. My cousin brought her current boyfriend. When my grandpa inquired about what work he did, they young man answered that he was a computer scientist and he was working in a group that was trying to develop "artificial intelligence". This surprised grandpa. Grandpa was no enemy of machines. He had worked as a Model T mechanic. As a young man in his late 20's, in the early 1920's, he studied electricity. He was more engineer than farmer. He could explain, from memory, the workings of long obsolete steam engines. He once told me that he was glad when horses were replaced by tractors. Grandpa said he did not miss horses because they had minds of their own and because of that could be unpredictable and dangerous. Machines could be dangerous, but for him, they were predictable. "2001 A Space Odyssey" was not in Grandpa's cultural vocabulary. (Ironically, The HAL 9000, was voiced by a great Shakespearean actor, the late Douglas Rain, who had great emotional range. Even more ironically, according to Anthony Hopkins, Rain's HAL 900 inspired him when he created Hannibal Lecter for Silence of the Lambs.) But, as usual, I digress. Grandpa, was intrigued by this strange idea of creating a thinking machine. He asked the young computer scientist how a machine could possibly be made to have a mind of its own, that is, Artificial Intelligence. The young man tried to explain his work. Grandpa's response went something like this: "Well, I'm not sure I understand any of that, but it seems to me that we ought to do something about improving natural intelligence before we move on to making artificial intelligence."
Awesome. Pops saw it all. A big thanks for this story, which brings to mind another toxic tendency. As people have become more socially isolated and their children lost in "digital dopamine," the presence and wisdom of our elders gets increasingly cast aside.
I don't think that it's a policy/platform issue. It's a reach and language one. What the GOP has successfully done is to build up a shield around its voters with the narrative of "eat this shit sandwich because Democrats death destruction."
Piercing the bubble will require reaching into it and explaining in easy language why policy platforms are in the interest of voters who normally vote GOP despite being aware that they're eating shit sandwiches.
Yeah, lots of luck with that. But Sarah says we might be able to reach everyone but the last 32% (her core-MAGA estimate). Of course, they've all been voting against their own self-interest all their lives so it isn't going to be easy.
Thank god (I'm an atheist!) someone more important than I am is calling out the danger of unregulated AI!!! Thank you a billion! Will "playing outside with friends" become as obsolete a term as 'buggy whip'? I have long deplored that the key to AI is in it's very name. . .Artificial. Besides more CIVICS (and American HISTORY) being taught annually in schools from 6th grade on, what else is needed is teachers who can teach CRITICAL THINKING skills. And Empathy. It is a basic human trait, not found in AI.
Some of them do a pretty good job of mimicking empathy. I usually call them on "feelings" and other things they can't do because they are computer programs, but it still pops up once in awhile. I don't talk to AI about my feelings, but we have philosophical discussions from time to time. I agree with everything you said though.
No, no, they're just rying to make everything beautiful for everyone. From Marc Andreessen, venture capital broligarch and all around horrible human being, quoted in the Washington Monthly:
"A small percent of people live in a real-world environment that is rich, even overflowing, with glorious substances, beautiful settings, plentiful stimulation, and many fascinating people to talk to, and to work with, and to date … Everyone else, the vast majority of humanity, lacks Reality Privilege—their online world is, or will be, immeasurably richer and more fulfilling than most of the physical and social environment around them in the quote-unquote real world … Reality has had 5,000 years to get good, and is clearly still woefully lacking for most people; I don’t think we should wait another 5,000 years to see if it eventually closes the gap. We should build—and we are building—online worlds that make life and work and love wonderful for everyone, no matter what level of reality deprivation they find themselves in."
I believe that there was a sci-fi movie called "The Matrix" that discussed this, and it wasn't particularly positive about it.
This is wonderful news. Finally, someone in power sees that we are failing our children. They are developing psychoses from algorithm poisoning. They can't read longform and are losing their focus.
And although I termed this as effects on children, the same effects are failing adults. We are an internet-poisoned nation, dying as surely as if we all drank lead.
Now among my age cohorts, you know what's making a huge comeback? DVD players. Cars with the bare minimum of electronics and no screens. That's what's in style now.
Get AI out of our schools! The way those Silicon Valley Epstein-related freaks see our public schools is as a place to suck up our money. They don't like our children and aren't afraid to see them all fail if that helps their children get a leg up and over. Get AI out of school!
One more thing: competition with China for WHAT? What is the prize we're competing for here, who can destroy their children's brains the fastest or who can destroy their economy the fastest? I don't want to hear a word about competition from China until I know what we are competing for.
My wife's school just got an AI subscription "to help students with grammar and editing". It asks the students if they want it to answer the question for them correctly or if they want it to make an answer "that sounds like a student wrote it". Super cool. Very helpful. Extremely difficult to design assignments that can't be cheated on.
Wonderful points. I could not agree more. My wife has a "smart" car that is a pain in the ass. The human must not be taken out of decision making. I hate the push button cars and will never get rid of my ignition key. The "next thing" is not the best thing and never will be.
Good piece and very apropos. I would add the threat of crypto currency as well as the tremendous amounts of energy required for the tech world.
Lauren's relentless promotion of the "Third Way" corporatist hacks has become an embarrassment for this site. Anyone who claims to be for the good guys, but who calls a stellar candidate like Aftyn Behn "far left", is doing the work of MAGA and Trump. Period. And "radical"? Please explain to me what was "radical" about Aftyn Behn's campaign, policies, or person. No, really. Instead of casually throwing out these pejorative terms like, you know, Trump and Republicans, please explain what you base these accusations on. Either that, or stop acting as a shill for corporate front organizations like Third Way and bad mouthing top tier candidates (and human beings) who captured 13% of 2024 Trump voters in a blood red district.
This crap has gone on long enough, Egan. Stop shilling for DLC apparatchiks who will gut any possibility of real change if/when Democrats regain power. Now.
Sorry, just startled—the DLC exists again? And is big enough to have “apparatchiks”? I didn’t hear about this and they aren’t google-able, could you tell me more?
Data centers are the key to the fight. Dems would do well to follow More Perfect Union on messaging about electricity and water bill increases and short term construction jobs with little benefit to communities.
Good luck to Democrats trying to form a coherent, effective anti-AI message. Heck, good luck to the Democrats trying to do anything effectively. Aftyn was an excellent candidate, but the way our districts are drawn here in Tennessee, she really didn’t have a chance this time. But I think she’s got a good future.
She had a softball question on Sunday that could have got her election day votes. Had she said reform, not abolish ICE, focus on violent criminals and not day laborers, she might have lost some activists but gained votes. Only 8 or 9 House members sponsored a bill to abolish ICE. She let herself be defined as extreme.
ICE is so broken it cannot be reformed. It has to be destroyed and brought back as something better. Just firing all the Proud Boys isn't enough. The entire organization is infected with hate.
Yep, she has to learn how to campaign from the middle, which means placating people's ignorance and prejudices, and then govern from the world of competency, decency, and liberal democracy, and in this world ICE needs to be eliminated (and every single Trump hire fired with prejudice) and its functions folded into existing agencies. But your answer in a public debate is the correct one. Sometimes you have to swallow your pride.
I don't think there are very many people left at ICE who have not succumbed to the violence and cruelty. I really think they ALL have to go. Just get rid of the organization and start something new. Or maybe we could have psychologists talk to people who've worked there since before Trump's FIRST term and see if they can keep their jobs.
I suspect ICE at this point is rotten to the core, given the goals of DOJ and national security (to provide an military force that only answers to Trump). But it is, even now, absolutely self-defeating to say 'abolish ice'. Ignore political reality at one's own peril. "Reform" is good enough and can mean purging the authoritarian bullies from its leadership and ranks.
Aftyn Behn could not answer a question about abolishing ICE. She was a poor candidate.
Did she say abolish ICE? I thought most Americans agreed, but maybe not in Tennessee.
A huge majority of Americans, I think the last I heard was 70%, think ICE is doing a terrible job. I'm not sure what percentage think it should be abolished.
She was a really good candidate. Her experiences with ICE as a social worker overwhelmed her political instincts. I hope she learns and finds her path forward.
"Congressional Dads Caucus." Really?
Once again "We're doing this for the kids..." There is no "safe AI" just as there is no safe internet or safe antisocial media. The safety of these technologies are entirely in the hands of their users. My AI enhanced Google search is a great, if not totally reliable, tool.
I know of a family that has nothing but "dumbphones."
The whole notion of government protecting citizens from technology, which they can choose to use or not, is simply absurd with all sorts of unintended consequences that creates markets that circumvent those protections. In a market driven capitalistic society AI is simply beyond effective regulatory reach and inviting further regulatory capture. There will never be a "neutral" regulatory framework that isn't corrupted by politics and money.
I have to say that I am sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party solution (apart from the spying and government propaganda) which is to make the utilitarian positives of the internet widely available but also totally controlling the social media environment to prevent the domination of antisocial actors as we have here in the west.
The EU is on the path of serious tech regulation.