But if you want to know how little he understands about people and their relationships to technology, go on Twitter for five minutes. One of the most prominent signatories of the open letter was Elon Musk, an early investor in OpenAI. But one of the defining features of our time is that the engineers – who do not, in my experience, have even the faintest education in the humanities or even recognize that society and culture are worthy of study – simply have no idea how their inventions interact with the world. Many of the most important engineers in the field indulge in AI doomerism this is unquestionably true. To stay sane, I have had to abide by twin principles: I don’t believe it until I see it. One of the reasons AI doomerism bores me is that it’s become familiar – I’ve heard it all before. I have heard geniuses – bona fide geniuses – declare that medical schools should no longer teach radiology because it would all be automated soon. During that time, I have heard, from intelligent sources who were usually reliable, that the trucking industry was about to end, that China was in possession of a trillion-parameter natural language processing AI with superhuman intelligence. I have been working with and reporting on AI since 2017, which is prehistoric in this field. Remember when WeWork was going to end commercial real estate? Remember when crypto was going to lead to the abolition of central banks? Remember when the metaverse was going to end meeting people in real life? Silicon Valley uses apocalypse for marketing purposes: they tell you their tech is going to end the world to show you how important they are. The most important thing to remember about tech doomerism in general is that it’s a form of advertising, a species of hype. The most important thing to remember about tech doomerism in general is that it’s a form of advertising, a species of hype
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