1, #128 - Unexpected
Estimated Read Time: 41 seconds.
Hey, you know that one movie about the invention of super-intelligent machines, where that was a great thing for humanity?
Me, neither.
This week, I read a Kevin Kelly essay suggesting that part of the reason people are hesitant to use AI is because of the stories we’ve always told about this kind of technology—they’re almost all dystopian catastrophes and cautionary tales.
Kelly goes on to reference legendary sci-fi writer Arthur C Clarke, who made a list in 1963 of the technologies humanity has predicted vs. those we haven’t:
So, will AI be a very good thing or a very bad thing? Well, have cars been very good or very bad for us? What about phones? The Internet? Electronics?
Some positive and some negative in each, right?
I would be surprised if any new technology is different. So, even if AI looms as a threat in our collective imagination, I hope we won’t let that force us down an expected path. This technology won’t solve all our problems—but we don’t need to be afraid of it, either.
Insight inspired by: Kevin Kelly and his essay, The Unpredicted.
I think about this a lot. Definitely worth keeping in mind how bad we are at predicting the future with all of this stuff. And people are potentially too pessimistic about the future in general these days.
But I think some of the reason for that anxiety is that the stakes seem to be higher than they've ever been, precisely because of all this tech-enabled connectivity, right? Like, we actually have to worry now about the malevolent use of technology by someone 10,000 miles away, which has not really been the case for most of human history. Until pretty recently, most of the downsides of technology were relatively localized. Now, pretty much every single system we depend on for basic survival is connected to and dependent on the continued smooth operation of numerous other highly complicated global systems.
I don't know if this is making any sense. I've been thinking about writing an essay about it, as soon as I finish the 15 other unrelated drafts I'm working on.
(Also you said "cars" twice in the paragraph under the image)