I also read the Sacasas article you quoted and wonder if the same questions apply to technology in general and not just AI? I personally think AI is something of a marketing scam. It’s more of a rebranding of technology to get something more from us. There has always been the narrative that “technology is a tool” > “humans are evolved to use tools” > “therefore technology is inevitable”. I suspect this is all oversimplified on purpose. Technology may just be a useful construct to gain our compliance. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be threatened with AI, it would only be used in the service of human good. I think humans are way too susceptible to narratives and those in power use that against us.
Hi Rick, apologies for overlooking your comment for so long. Thank you for commenting!
I think you’re right that there is a broader point that could be made here about technology more generally, not just AI: namely, that it is ostensibly pursued in the service of some human good—advanced in the form of the logic/narrative you’ve articulated—and yet what often results instead are not just solutions but a new set of problems. I tend to think that these developments are largely out of anybody’s direct control, even though there are, of course, some very powerful people in the tech world who are responsible for developing new technologies. It seems to me that it is the simplicity of these narratives about what technology is and how it should interact with human life—and the discomfort we have with questioning them—that is most responsible, at bottom, for our feeling that something has gone awry here.
I also read the Sacasas article you quoted and wonder if the same questions apply to technology in general and not just AI? I personally think AI is something of a marketing scam. It’s more of a rebranding of technology to get something more from us. There has always been the narrative that “technology is a tool” > “humans are evolved to use tools” > “therefore technology is inevitable”. I suspect this is all oversimplified on purpose. Technology may just be a useful construct to gain our compliance. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be threatened with AI, it would only be used in the service of human good. I think humans are way too susceptible to narratives and those in power use that against us.
Hi Rick, apologies for overlooking your comment for so long. Thank you for commenting!
I think you’re right that there is a broader point that could be made here about technology more generally, not just AI: namely, that it is ostensibly pursued in the service of some human good—advanced in the form of the logic/narrative you’ve articulated—and yet what often results instead are not just solutions but a new set of problems. I tend to think that these developments are largely out of anybody’s direct control, even though there are, of course, some very powerful people in the tech world who are responsible for developing new technologies. It seems to me that it is the simplicity of these narratives about what technology is and how it should interact with human life—and the discomfort we have with questioning them—that is most responsible, at bottom, for our feeling that something has gone awry here.