Why The Debates Over A.I. Are Wonderful
A.I. may be the most discussed and debated revolutionary technology in human history. A.I. may well be the best tech to happen to humanity. But not for the reasons you think.
While our distant ancestors probably didn’t get into philosophical debates over the societal and cultural impacts of stone tools around 2 million years ago, we have in the last few hundred years, had some fairly serious debates over revolutionary technologies such as the printing press, knitting machines, the internet and now, Artificial Intelligence.
It may well be that the degree, volume and speed of the debates around AI are at a level that we’ve never before debated a revolutionary technology. While it can seem shrouded in shimmering sheets of hyperbole, confusing at times and contradictory at others, it is actually quite wonderful.
AI may in fact be, one of the best things to happen to humanity, but not for the reason you might think. Why?
Our ability to create written and visual records of our societies and cultures goes back many thousands of years. Some new evidence suggests that our distant cousins, Neanderthals, may have even created visual communications on cave walls. Some anthropologists and archeologists posit that we Homo Sapiens may have even taken the technology of fire from Neanderthals or other human ancestors. I digress.
It was the printing press that enabled Martin Luther to mass produce his pamphlets and distribute them at what was lightening speed at that time. This lead to the Christian Reformation. The Catholic church was not amused. Governments debated the implications of the press.
Some entrepreneurs and societal groups saw the value of spreading ideas, academics too, saw the value of printed books; mostly because they could get into really good arguments with academics outside their own universities. There were public debates about the dangers of the printing press, just as there were about the internet in the late 1990’s.
Until the mid 20th century or so, as I’ve written before, cultures had a fair bit of time and space to decide how they wanted to adopt, adapt and leverage technologies. With the rise of the global internet, this state of being collapsed in on itself.
Now anyone can hop in on any topic they like, rant and rave like lunatics, create whatever alternate facts they like and have at it. Reasoned, smart, knowledgeable people can wade in as well. While we may be starting to figure out the pitfalls and benefits of social media and how to make it work, the bullet train of Generative AI plowed into our collective sentience in late 2022.
Now, we are seeing, like much of politics today, two polar opposite camps; the doomers and the utopianists. And the majority of society that is much more interested in the latest Netflix series and comfortably resides in the belief that AI is a singular technology.
So what’s really wonderful about all these debates, arguments and discussions about AI then? Because it’s rapidly become a whole-of-society event. It’s average citizens who are interested, learning, playing, trying LLMs out to see what it can do.
We are now seeing philosophers, economists, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists all weigh in; writing books, articles, papers. Being interviewed by media outlets and popular podcasts, speaking at technology conferences (previously unheard of. Who would’ve imagined a philosopher as a keynote speaker at a tech conference?) The social sciences are now fully, wonderfully, engaged on the technology of AI.
Social scientists are even beginning to gain a voice in the debates and discussions around social media and how we can make it work for society. Slowly, culture is questioning the long leash we put in the hands of the engineers.
Much of the reason for such a degree of debate around AI in our sociocultural systems is because of what AI means to us in terms of what it means to be human. As animals. Western European thinking has long tried, through religion and ideologies like atheism, to separate humans from other animals. Yet we are animals. We are primates. We are not some divine non-animal species as creationists like to tell the story. It may be a comforting fantasy, but it is just a story.
Which brings me to the other aspect of AI that both frightens us and amazes us. While none of these LLMs are very good at truly creative stories yet, they likely will become so. As historian Yuval Noah Harari points out, humans tell stories in order to live our lives. By telling stories, we find common ground, or ways to fight one another too, and to organise as a species.
We realize, some people consciously, and others subconsciously, that should we ever get to what is described as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), or machines that are more intelligent than humans, that we will have, in effect, created a new species. This too frightens and fascinates us.
In our current economic model of capitalism, AI frightens us for massive job losses. The reality is that, as sociologist Max Weber noted in the early 20th century, technology always leads to a greater division of labour (read, more jobs, not less.)
AI, in its various forms and subsets from Machine Learning and Neural Networks to GAI, taps into our existential fears and fascinations. Touching every part of what it means to be human.
A reality is that machines cannot and never will, think like humans. They are machines. They are not animals. But that doesn’t mean they can’t have both negative and positive impacts. All technologies are a double-edged sword. No technology is neutral and all technologies have unintended consequences.
Because we know these principles to be true now, with thanks to how social media impacted, and continues to impact society, we leapt into the debates and discussions about AI so very quickly. Well, sort of. Generative AI. Other AI tools have been used across various parts of society for decades.
When GAI came along, we already knew that many AI tools were quite good at being racist and gender biased. This helped fuel the fires of debate around LLMs.
So now we are having this wonderful debate, argument and many discussions around AI and its role in our sociocultural systems. On a global scale. Unlike any revolutionary technology that has come before, civil society is deeply engaged in the dialogue of AI. Academia and governments too are engaged.
While some express fears (justifiably so) around the Silicon Valley elites controlling AI, they should take comfort in the fact that broader society is too. Some of these tech giants may hold economic power, but no company has ever been able to sway the invisible hand, cultural agency and the desires of the masses.
So this whole-of-society debate is wonderful because we are talking about what it means to be human. We are hearing from diverse communities and they too are engaged. The outcomes of our debates and discussions around AI may be more meaningful for the progress of humanity than the technology itself. That may well be the greatest gift Artificial Intelligence gives to humanity.