I just replaced twenty-one people for $200 a month with the technology that might cure cancer, find fusion, or end the species. The political class is still asking whether to hold hearings on it.
For my last book, AI created the cover design and interior illustrations, was my editor and proof-reader, and marketing consultant. If I'd asked it to (for the most part I resisted the temptation) it would have written whole sections, or perhaps the entire book, for me. But that is not the scariest part. It also acted as a motivational coach and pseudo-therapist telling me how very important my topic was and what brilliant insights I had and what an eloquent writer I am. All of which is bullshit.
The scariest consequence of AI might not be what it does to us so much as what it convinces us we can do to ourselves.
Wowee. What a masterpiece. First may I point out something very important… your use of AI created a product… in describing the product you wrote that it felt good to create something and launch it for the PUBLIC good. That may be true for some of the AI programmers just as it was true for myself spending over twenty years in Neuroscience. While the programmers, much like myself, didn’t make oodles of money we believed that we were doing something that would benefit more than ourselves. And, this is where the split occurs… the average AI users will do so with an aim for personal profit. We will be told “oh.. it’s for the shareholders”. Really? Watch the CEO’s compensation package rise into the billions. The CEO is wealthy, some are what I call uber wealthy. These cats have so much money they control global markets and run our government. Are you starting to get the picture? So, yeah the job doomsday scenario is coming around the block, and like a tractor trailer cannot be stopped. But, what really can’t be stopped is what’s behind it, or in it… the driver of the tractor trailer is called GREED and is about to run you over. The “universal income” is a BS pipe dream fed to the masses as the truck rolls closer and closer. Now if that wasn’t enough what about a planetary doomsday scenario? All because of GREED, plain human greed! Can this be stopped? Can this be legislated away? A long time ago a man called Plato wrote a book. It’s called “The Republic”. In that book he outlines his ideas for the qualities the leader of a republic must have… he called this ideal the “Philosopher King”… maybe Plato was biased but maybe just maybe he had the right idea.
More 'what happens when...' Right now AI is seen by the average pirate person like the Computer on Star Trek: Discovery, a benevolent helpmate at best, with the possibility of both good and unintential consequences. This is no longer an ivory tower situation. What happens when someone seriously criminal, seriously malevolent, perpetrators get ahold of Claude - or its offspring? We have no way to regulate, police, or even adjudicate the misuse of AI right now, let alone whatever will exists in six months...or next week.
Is there anybody in what is left of the US government even considering asking the right people the right questions? Let alone developing answers.
One hypothetical that should terrify everyone: Trump using Claude.
I loved the read of this whole minefield that we're all in right now. We need a really good candidate for this kind of job that fits the policy moment we're in. It is literally all of us now to collaborate with each other better than we have been put into. The math is what no one is talking about. The two paragraphs that grabbed me were the four politicians that had openly talked about AI threatening the middle class and the fact that we need a basic universal income that Sam Altman has been talking about since AI came out to destroy the middle class.
The last paragraphs are the most important and infuriating ones to read. We're going to have to create something different with the people who are being displaced the most. It's all of us. I hate saying this but it's everyone. We're going for to have to create a different reality for everyone. I don't know how to do that off the top of my head.
The math is not mathing. I'm saying the quiet part out loud.
I know!!!! I based my prior comment on an article I read that actually stated that, in war-gaming exercises, the AI being trained ended up going for nuclear weapons over 90 % of the time. One of the scariest things I'd ever read!
Yes, you're unfortunately correct on the surface issues. However, the times are changing and we're all in this position together. That, in and of itself, is a crisis and and an opportunity. We have to save ourselves from the cult of idiots that are in power nowadays. I have no easy answers for the road ahead. It's not going to be easy. We can do hard things, like putting the orange clown out of power. That is the first thing to do. The road ahead will not be easy. We hsve hard choices to make! We have to do this for ourselves.
I keep trying to think of any technology, in any sense of the word, that seems more likely to destroy humanity, and I assume there were a few, back somewhere in the mists of time - some idea, concept, technique, something, that somehow blindly caused a civilization to implode and collapse. We know there were more than a few, probably destroyed by natural disasters, simple geological bad luck, but several just stopped existing, within a few short years.
It's weird that we have no word for these forces, though Hubris is certainly a factor, so "Hubristic Civil Suicide" might work, if we survive long enough to think of a better one.
There's no way we will ever have a universal basic income, because Americans are ALLERGIC to TAXING THE RICH.
In the American mind right now, anyanyanyanyany siphoning of anyanyanyanyany money at all from a Titan Of Industry for ANYthing benefitting ANYone who isn't, is "punishing those poor wealthy for their success." In the American mind, The Businessman is to do anything at all to make money, even when it means the average person gets no raises, no benefits, and no SNAP. Anyone who cannot make ends meet is "lazy," because "This is America!!" "All you have to do is work hard and anyone can get rich, therefore anyone who isn't is lazy, or they are stupid and should have planned better."
You cannot tell a person like this that we need to tax rich people for a universal basic income because all these educated people lost their jobs. We hate educated people. They're all "woke libtards" and we hate "elitism."
Where are we going to get the money for a universal basic income if we do not tax the rich? They're the people profiting off this very technology. Yet the quintessential American argument is that THEY invented it, THEY worked hard on it, so THEY deserve every last little penny, and must not be punished for doing so well. Even though it means millions go without.
Instead, we make government try to handle problems by BORROWING from the rich, WHILE cutting their taxes (because the people who work the hardest shouldn't have to lose one itty bitty penny for some stupid JOBLESS person!). Which means that our tax dollars go to pay the rich their interest on our national debt ... which we incur precisely because we think taxing them is "communism" and "libtard."
Universal basic income is considered "socialism." And you will not find a dirtier word to anyone who identifies as MAGA. And they just redrew all the maps so they can keep the House and the White House FOREVER.
I am 58. Personally, I hope I just keel over with a heart attack in the next year or two.
Whew, this is overwhelming. What about the unsustainable energy sink of AI? What about the unsustainable business model of AI (see Gary Marcus, Ed Zitron and Cory Doctorow). What about flaws like AI hallucinations? Are these limiting factors?
I’ve been waiting to read this exact article for some time. I cannot thank you enough for the purity of its content. For its raw heart-of-the-matter information. 🙏🏼
Wow. This is such a powerful post. So much to digest! Certainly on the surface, it rings true. I guess my hope is that enough people see it to realize that it's up to us to shape--and contain--the power of AI. Thank you, Lawrence Winnerman.
How many times have humans evolved to the point of self-extermination? How many millions of years passed before we crawled onto land from the primordial soup of carbon-based life to begin the evolutionary cycle again? How did we extinguish ourselves last time? Most importantly, what lessons were carried forward in the universe that we failed to learn each time?
Who would have thought that the underlying root cause of our species’ extinction was the *overabundance* of resources…that a handful of us wanted to control?
The plutocrats do not even get their hands soiled while manipulating our economy. They use their sorcerers’ apprentices for that. So long as we continue to tilt at the windmills of government policy, they continue to run the economy while gleefully watching our Sisyphean efforts to bring change. Our government has become an insulating layer between the common folks and the plutocrats serving the latter while placating the former.
Our Constitution was debated, drafted, signed and ratified by elite white males. The Philadelphia Convention was conducted in secrecy behind closed doors and windows, during the heat of May—September, 1787. What we are experiencing today is a result of the codification and ratification of a constitution meant to serve those who wrote and signed it.
IMHO, nothing short of a popular uprising against this tyranny will invoke change that is lasting and more concerned about equal rights, liberty, protection, and justice. Trump has ripped off the proverbial band-aid so it’s time to treat the disease, not the symptoms. Otherwise, we can begin rolling the stone up the hill again.
This is quite an incredible article... one I plan on saving and sending to people I know. One small quibble -- there are, in fact, robber barons.... though in this case most of them are called 'tech bros'. But they are robbing us, all right. Elon Musk anyone? And his DOGE team, that has all but wrecked the Social Security infrastructure and stolen almost every single American's sensitive data? What about Peter Theil? And then there are the CEO's of huge multinational corporations, like Exxon. These people have become robber barons as the tax code has shifted more and more in their favor. It isn't the same as the Industrial Revolution, I agree -- but we are definitely in a second Gilded Age, complete with robber barons. One of them sits in the Oval Office.
For my last book, AI created the cover design and interior illustrations, was my editor and proof-reader, and marketing consultant. If I'd asked it to (for the most part I resisted the temptation) it would have written whole sections, or perhaps the entire book, for me. But that is not the scariest part. It also acted as a motivational coach and pseudo-therapist telling me how very important my topic was and what brilliant insights I had and what an eloquent writer I am. All of which is bullshit.
The scariest consequence of AI might not be what it does to us so much as what it convinces us we can do to ourselves.
This is a great point, Joe, and I think about it all the time.
I don't know how anyone can read this post and not go to bed knowing it will be a night filled with nightmares.
Wowee. What a masterpiece. First may I point out something very important… your use of AI created a product… in describing the product you wrote that it felt good to create something and launch it for the PUBLIC good. That may be true for some of the AI programmers just as it was true for myself spending over twenty years in Neuroscience. While the programmers, much like myself, didn’t make oodles of money we believed that we were doing something that would benefit more than ourselves. And, this is where the split occurs… the average AI users will do so with an aim for personal profit. We will be told “oh.. it’s for the shareholders”. Really? Watch the CEO’s compensation package rise into the billions. The CEO is wealthy, some are what I call uber wealthy. These cats have so much money they control global markets and run our government. Are you starting to get the picture? So, yeah the job doomsday scenario is coming around the block, and like a tractor trailer cannot be stopped. But, what really can’t be stopped is what’s behind it, or in it… the driver of the tractor trailer is called GREED and is about to run you over. The “universal income” is a BS pipe dream fed to the masses as the truck rolls closer and closer. Now if that wasn’t enough what about a planetary doomsday scenario? All because of GREED, plain human greed! Can this be stopped? Can this be legislated away? A long time ago a man called Plato wrote a book. It’s called “The Republic”. In that book he outlines his ideas for the qualities the leader of a republic must have… he called this ideal the “Philosopher King”… maybe Plato was biased but maybe just maybe he had the right idea.
Thanks, John. So much of this is clearly driven by greed—you’re spot on. How do you think we can regulate it?
We are doomed and I can't see any chance of a last-minute reprieve!
More 'what happens when...' Right now AI is seen by the average pirate person like the Computer on Star Trek: Discovery, a benevolent helpmate at best, with the possibility of both good and unintential consequences. This is no longer an ivory tower situation. What happens when someone seriously criminal, seriously malevolent, perpetrators get ahold of Claude - or its offspring? We have no way to regulate, police, or even adjudicate the misuse of AI right now, let alone whatever will exists in six months...or next week.
Is there anybody in what is left of the US government even considering asking the right people the right questions? Let alone developing answers.
One hypothetical that should terrify everyone: Trump using Claude.
You’re so right, Barron. Too many people think of the computer from Star Trek. It’s so much more complex and capable of misuse than that.
I loved the read of this whole minefield that we're all in right now. We need a really good candidate for this kind of job that fits the policy moment we're in. It is literally all of us now to collaborate with each other better than we have been put into. The math is what no one is talking about. The two paragraphs that grabbed me were the four politicians that had openly talked about AI threatening the middle class and the fact that we need a basic universal income that Sam Altman has been talking about since AI came out to destroy the middle class.
The last paragraphs are the most important and infuriating ones to read. We're going to have to create something different with the people who are being displaced the most. It's all of us. I hate saying this but it's everyone. We're going for to have to create a different reality for everyone. I don't know how to do that off the top of my head.
The math is not mathing. I'm saying the quiet part out loud.
Thanks, Sarah. Yeah; the math doesn’t really work and it’s hard to get beyond that, isn’t it? People are ignoring the truth at our peril.
We need a Petrov moment for AI. Just saying.
What's even scarier, if AI is put in charge of 'defense/war scenarios', we won't even have a Petrov for nuclear deterrence.
We need a real human being in the fray to save us from ourselves?? Did I really just write that?
I know!!!! I based my prior comment on an article I read that actually stated that, in war-gaming exercises, the AI being trained ended up going for nuclear weapons over 90 % of the time. One of the scariest things I'd ever read!
Well-- that is completely f------ up. It's a tool to use-- not a panacea.
We have good political candidates. WE JUST WON'T VOTE FOR THEM.
To an American, the only "good" political candidate is One Who Cuts Taxes.
Oh, and establishes a goon squad that kidnaps people and shoots protesters in the head.
Oh, and starts STUPID wars that will end up causing a world famine when we run out of fuel to transport food and fertilizer to grow it.
Americans are a stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid people.
Yes, you're unfortunately correct on the surface issues. However, the times are changing and we're all in this position together. That, in and of itself, is a crisis and and an opportunity. We have to save ourselves from the cult of idiots that are in power nowadays. I have no easy answers for the road ahead. It's not going to be easy. We can do hard things, like putting the orange clown out of power. That is the first thing to do. The road ahead will not be easy. We hsve hard choices to make! We have to do this for ourselves.
Unfortunately, we need some defectors from the world of idiots and they won't change unless and until they are starving.,
And even then most of them will blame Biden.
At least 77,302,580 are. And they, and we, and the entire planet are paying for it.
Sucks!
"Live and learn" I guess, except we're getting ever closer to where we'll never have a chance to live, or learn.
Space odyssey two thousand, the computers are taking over.
Yup.
I keep trying to think of any technology, in any sense of the word, that seems more likely to destroy humanity, and I assume there were a few, back somewhere in the mists of time - some idea, concept, technique, something, that somehow blindly caused a civilization to implode and collapse. We know there were more than a few, probably destroyed by natural disasters, simple geological bad luck, but several just stopped existing, within a few short years.
It's weird that we have no word for these forces, though Hubris is certainly a factor, so "Hubristic Civil Suicide" might work, if we survive long enough to think of a better one.
Adrian, I think so much of this age will be defined by hubris, if, in fact, anyone is left to define the age at all.
There's no way we will ever have a universal basic income, because Americans are ALLERGIC to TAXING THE RICH.
In the American mind right now, anyanyanyanyany siphoning of anyanyanyanyany money at all from a Titan Of Industry for ANYthing benefitting ANYone who isn't, is "punishing those poor wealthy for their success." In the American mind, The Businessman is to do anything at all to make money, even when it means the average person gets no raises, no benefits, and no SNAP. Anyone who cannot make ends meet is "lazy," because "This is America!!" "All you have to do is work hard and anyone can get rich, therefore anyone who isn't is lazy, or they are stupid and should have planned better."
You cannot tell a person like this that we need to tax rich people for a universal basic income because all these educated people lost their jobs. We hate educated people. They're all "woke libtards" and we hate "elitism."
Where are we going to get the money for a universal basic income if we do not tax the rich? They're the people profiting off this very technology. Yet the quintessential American argument is that THEY invented it, THEY worked hard on it, so THEY deserve every last little penny, and must not be punished for doing so well. Even though it means millions go without.
Instead, we make government try to handle problems by BORROWING from the rich, WHILE cutting their taxes (because the people who work the hardest shouldn't have to lose one itty bitty penny for some stupid JOBLESS person!). Which means that our tax dollars go to pay the rich their interest on our national debt ... which we incur precisely because we think taxing them is "communism" and "libtard."
Universal basic income is considered "socialism." And you will not find a dirtier word to anyone who identifies as MAGA. And they just redrew all the maps so they can keep the House and the White House FOREVER.
I am 58. Personally, I hope I just keel over with a heart attack in the next year or two.
Who wants to live here??
Whew, this is overwhelming. What about the unsustainable energy sink of AI? What about the unsustainable business model of AI (see Gary Marcus, Ed Zitron and Cory Doctorow). What about flaws like AI hallucinations? Are these limiting factors?
"The political class in this country has not even begun to understand what is happening to the people I used to work with."
They don't care. All they care about is 1.) hanging onto their own jobs, and 2.) getting rich. That means TRUMP, TRUMP, TRUMP, and MAGA MAGA MAGA.
They don't care if half the people in this country STARVE TO DEATH.
Which we very well might. Grocery trucks all run on diesel, you know.
You’re so right. I think about this all the time now.
I don’t have one bit of faith in the government to fix this.
I agree, Michelle, and yet…I have less faith that the robber barons of Tech are going to do the right thing.
I’ve been waiting to read this exact article for some time. I cannot thank you enough for the purity of its content. For its raw heart-of-the-matter information. 🙏🏼
The Great Conundrum of our Time.. And, yup... no one is even asking the questions. Sigh. Great commenters here, as well as a brilliant author~
Wow. This is such a powerful post. So much to digest! Certainly on the surface, it rings true. I guess my hope is that enough people see it to realize that it's up to us to shape--and contain--the power of AI. Thank you, Lawrence Winnerman.
How many times have humans evolved to the point of self-extermination? How many millions of years passed before we crawled onto land from the primordial soup of carbon-based life to begin the evolutionary cycle again? How did we extinguish ourselves last time? Most importantly, what lessons were carried forward in the universe that we failed to learn each time?
Who would have thought that the underlying root cause of our species’ extinction was the *overabundance* of resources…that a handful of us wanted to control?
The plutocrats do not even get their hands soiled while manipulating our economy. They use their sorcerers’ apprentices for that. So long as we continue to tilt at the windmills of government policy, they continue to run the economy while gleefully watching our Sisyphean efforts to bring change. Our government has become an insulating layer between the common folks and the plutocrats serving the latter while placating the former.
Our Constitution was debated, drafted, signed and ratified by elite white males. The Philadelphia Convention was conducted in secrecy behind closed doors and windows, during the heat of May—September, 1787. What we are experiencing today is a result of the codification and ratification of a constitution meant to serve those who wrote and signed it.
IMHO, nothing short of a popular uprising against this tyranny will invoke change that is lasting and more concerned about equal rights, liberty, protection, and justice. Trump has ripped off the proverbial band-aid so it’s time to treat the disease, not the symptoms. Otherwise, we can begin rolling the stone up the hill again.
This is quite an incredible article... one I plan on saving and sending to people I know. One small quibble -- there are, in fact, robber barons.... though in this case most of them are called 'tech bros'. But they are robbing us, all right. Elon Musk anyone? And his DOGE team, that has all but wrecked the Social Security infrastructure and stolen almost every single American's sensitive data? What about Peter Theil? And then there are the CEO's of huge multinational corporations, like Exxon. These people have become robber barons as the tax code has shifted more and more in their favor. It isn't the same as the Industrial Revolution, I agree -- but we are definitely in a second Gilded Age, complete with robber barons. One of them sits in the Oval Office.
Something to keep in mind going forward.
Thanks, David.