A LETTER
You are regarded as a game changer, you are very influential and seemingly, so it comes down to me here, you are aware of your influence and responsibility.
Today people are talking about Silicon Valley and the groundbreaking changes that technology is bringing. I'd like to know:
Do you find code changes the world in which we organic humans live?
If yes, did it occur to you to ask the people through their political representatives in the government, apart from the impression the politicians themselves may make to you as advocates of the fact that the "free market" is in a better position to make decisions about human lives through technology?
Have you ever thought - maybe even against your own convictions - to inquiring about the consequences of the technological scale you initiated and are about to initiate through democratic processes from the stakeholders themselves, who are us, the people?
Have you ever heard anything about the "common good economy", which can do a democratic political process about the decision by means of the least personal pain a person can feel?
This means, for example, that committees of all ages and races of all nations are formed by people who pursue the following question:
Should algorithms be allowed to decide on philosophical questions of human existence?
For if this is not a question discussed thoroughly between many people who is going to be responsible for the unknown consequences? Should such as the use of self-propelled cars and other AI applications be determined by corporations, i.e. few minorities, because they have the developmental skills and investment power?
Has it occurred to you, Google, that because of your entrepreneurial activity and the unpredictable effects of your application technologies, it is necessary to have a politically ethical and philosophical debate and that this is part of corporate social responsibility towards humanity?
If humans become redundant in their activities as useful and common creatures through the use of artificial intelligence, do they not have to help decide whether this is not a question that should not be solely the curious and entrepreneurial activity of Google or Amazon, for example? But a matter of people who represent people outside of corporations?
The industrial revolution has largely replaced man's physical labour.
Humanity replaced this gap with intellectual and cognitive work.
The technological revolution is in the process of replacing man's cognitive abilities.
The question is: what will remain?
Remember, in the moment when humans lose their usefulness as physically and cognitive (thinking and feeling) significant beings, they lose all their political power.
Only when people can refuse to do a work, go on strike and it has a real impact on their fellow human beings can they exert political influence. But if they are not needed physically or cognitively: What then happens to people emotionally? What happens to humans who see themselves replaced by artificial intelligence?
What do you think, Google, of the view that intelligence and consciousness have always formed a unity in humans and that you and other IT giants are now able to decouple these two from each other? Because artificial intelligence is never consciousness.
Ah, Erika, you do not tremble before the received authority of the algorithm:)
I once wrote that medicine was the new religion and doctors the new priests, because we bow to their authority when we are vulnerable. They hold the keys to mysteries the rest of us cannot fathom.
And then there's Google. Who would have thought the day would come when Google could determine the fate of companies, political campaigns, public personalities? Determine the 'truth' we find when we search for information.
A new mystery, the algorithm, that is beyond our reach and understanding. I think the key to combating Google is to know what we want to find. If we are very careful in wording our searches, Google cannot lead us. We can lead. I especially like the quotation marks that limit Google's free-wheeling spirit.
Nice blog, as usual.
Yes, true what you say. Doctors are in many respects seen as the new priests. Also for the simple fact that no priest shows up in a hospital anymore when death is about to come. So many people then long for a person who is calm and serene and knows what to say and how to behave. If they still dare to think about it in this way and don't stay away until it's over and they just have to take care about the corpse.
I still haven't made up my mind about Google. They seem at least to open up for discussions, they invite people outside of their technological faculty from all kinds of specialities. "Google talks" get quite some attention which I find good and for which I hope it is not just PR but sincere. I tend to believe the last.
In the end, nobody wants to exist just as a consumer and to keep the machines running for merely to run the machines.
Oh, and look at the link above (interview) I gave to Valeria (insight-out). There was a young man during the Q&A session who asked what they at Google should do in the development sector and the answer was quite interesting.
I'll have to look at that link tomorrow. Feeling a bit overwhelmed tonight.
I think of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and of how we have always been suspicious of science we don't understand. There is a conflict between wanting the advances and not understanding the implications of those advances. I think we saw that in the splitting of the atom. And we see it today in AI (including Google's algorithm). We want the good and yet understand that we place enormous power, and therefore trust, in the hands of others. That is a daunting idea.
Indeed. People always identify with the latest technical achievement. In the past, when the steam engine was the innovation at the time of industrialization, the expression "one must let off steam" became established. As if man were a machine and pressure valves and hoses etc. lived in it. - Even a part of Freudian psychology is based on it. Much more than we always become aware of ourselves, we derive from the stories that we consider to be the best, or even the worst, through our own creations. I don't know when the expression of the "individual" (in-dividual) came up, but I found it interesting that it exists because man was considered "indivisible". Until modern times apparently. But if we divide a person and separate his spirit from his body and now his intelligence, we already have the problem, what Decartes unintentionally conjured up at that time, even aggravated.
Now that it has been said that the human organism is merely an algorithm, the reduction of the human being has emerged as a completely transparent and controllable form of life, in which everything can be measured not only on the outside, but also on the inside, and recorded in data (a form of new religion, the data religion).
It may be that if we are not careful, that the research that is just beginning and the scientists who describe consciousness as the "hard problem" are swept away by those who prefer to tell an ideology according to which the question "what is actually consciousness?" is completely irrelevant and it doesn't matter that you have one, but only how you can use it. Much of the human activity knits to this new ideology and sells it as something not only necessary, but even life sustaining and possibly even the path to immortality. This - becoming immortal and combating death itself - is a very strong ideology which, in my opinion, has the potential to wipe out everything that was previously lived as ideology.
It is high time to show this ideology its dark sides and to discuss the dangers, ethical aspects and prevention on a large global stage. This is what we need to ask our politicians, this is what we need to put on their agenda. This is where we can join organisations that find such important. The big questions of the future will definitely be philosophical, psychological in nature and spirituality is a very important part of life.
I was so weary yesterday--didn't get up until 12:30 today ! But am ready now.
I have particular interest in your observations about the pursuit of immortality. Years ago I noted how surprised some exercise enthusiasts were that they had been diagnosed with a fatal disease. Somehow they harbored the illusion that death could be forestalled through running, or drinking juice. I'm not critical of these pursuits and I have great sympathy for the people. I think a healthy lifestyle shows respect for the self. It's just that, we sometimes lose our humility in the face of the inexorable passage of time and the immensity of the universe. I always exercised and never abused my body, but didn't think these were insurance policies against the inevitable.
Back to your idea of narratives and myth: the myth of Prometheus I believe was intended to teach us (and Icarus, also) about overreaching. I'm not sure what that lesson is, but I think it has something to do with hubris--as individuals and as a race.
Good points. Healthy lifestyle seeing as having respect for life. I had some nasty discussions on this when a friend of mine really wiped me down because I smoke. It is my only vice. I might as well have said to her that she also abuses herself because she leads such a stressful and mentally unhealthy lifestyle, but since I'm not her mother, I'm not entitled to do that (and even mothers do lead the title only when their children are little), let alone rise morally above her. One argument is as stupid as another when it is derived from arrogance.
Oh, Prometheus I must look up. I once knew what it was about but forgot. Maybe I'll come back to it. Hubris is something which we in times all can fall into and I am embarrassed when I look back at my younger years or even recent mistakes and think about it :)
P.S. Are you okay? As you mentioned you were weary yesterday.
You smoke, I sip Coca cola. Who's perfect? :)
I'm fine. Just tired. It'll pass. It usually does.
Be well. Will check your blog for new posts.
Yes, nobody is perfect. Which I find quite comforting. Laughter!
Yes, I do. It will change every single aspect of life - medicine, war, politics, genes, evolution, society (e.g. how you meet friends, how you make families, etc.).
They shouldn't, but they will be. Humanity is not mature and wise enough to deal with its own invention. It is like Frankenstein.
Chaos, lack of freedom, lack of purpose, consumerism
I am not optimistic about it, at all. I hope I am wrong.
I, too think that AI is going to change our lives immensely. So this is a matter to discuss by many many people and in cooperation with governments and companies who have the power to create AI applications.
Look here, an interview between Google and Yuval Noah Harris.
I hope you are wrong. :)
Did you send this to google? You should probably find an email or something and send this to google, would love to see if they answered at all, you never know... crazier things have happened
No, I didn't do that. I maybe thought people who would like to have answered this questions as well might copy this letter or use it in another way so it one day could reach google. I don't think I am going to receive an answer. But I would be delighted to be proven wrong.
P.S. you posted your comment twice.
Deleted the other comment:) I've been having problems with busy, he sometimes posts twice for no reason...