The Cyber Show on Media Clickbait About Slop as 'Existential Threat' and Derek Thompson's Response to That
Some time ago we linked to this article by Derek Thompson (who regularly blogs) and that article caused Andy to publish "[p]assing thoughts" yesterday, having caused him to laugh a bit, then plaster this gentle rant in the front page of The Cyber Show. Before it vanishes from the front page, however, we're reproducing it below:
Oh the awesome irony
It's a strange feeling. Sometimes profound irony stuns you, like a slap to the face. Your brain does a somersault, adjusting to a rude truth set before you. Then you laugh. But what a dark, howling and desperate laugh it is.
Derek Thompson wrote (some of) a wonderful essay. As always, excellently written, masterfully structured. It's about why the human race is unable to avoid destroying itself. He introduces the concepts oBf "agentic AI" and "recursive self-improvement" in language accessible to the lay-person. The essay starts with an analysis of Dwarkesh Patel and many other smart people who are convinced that we must stop developing "AI" or face destruction.
He asks; "But what happens after these essays are published? Most of these people just go back to work, build more powerful AI?"
Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe, as surely all writers like myself hope, words alone, words sent out into the night, might persuade that one person, who might change their view or that of another… and we hope our words will live, prosper, propagate and make the world a little better? We write for a reason. To collectively survive. And therein lies the irony.
The author plays with the theme of impending species-suicide for several paragraphs, building up the dramatic tension. The drum beats to the slow march of impending doom, the unavoidable inevitability, the tragedy… And finally he is ready to tell us what we might understand and maybe do about this awful unfolding….
- Why not just stop?
To recap: The frontier AI labs are busy building something that a large share of their employees and leaders say is existentially dangerous.
So, why don't they just … stop?
And there it did.
Without a sniff of sarcasm, I was genuinely in that state of open-minded, happy anticipation that any writer could hope a reader to arrive at. But that was the trick, right?
There are five answers…
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I reflexively switch the channel, hit the back-button, and "just go back to work building… whatever".
There's your problem, right there Derek!
Money.
Do I need to hear the other four?
Okay, so we're all supposed to be used to clickbait, dickovers, and attempts to take over our computers with malicious JavaScript. But reading this hammers home a point with such a profound force I simply can't walk on by.
We once built an Internet that could have saved humanity. We had a window, for a few hopeful years. To freely exchange ideas, knowledge, to make positive congenial connections. To let all others know that we are each lonely, afraid, confused and seeking help to find peace. That at heart we are generous, loving and caring souls who want to express kindness to others.
Instead "AI" is the reflection trained on the Internet we actually got, the digitally exported force of an American, capitalist culture-war. A distillation of every acquisitive, underhand impulse. A model of how to push boundaries and "get away with" whatever we can squeeze out of systems for ourselves. In the last 30 years since AOL, since Facebook, since Edward Snowden showed us it's real face, we've built a model of everything that's shit about human beings. Suspicion. Greed. Rudeness. Fear. Aggression. Stupidity…
Like Helen said on the show last month "We're monsters. Look at what we did to the planet!" We exploit each other for our own minor advantage, to tease, extract, be disingenuous, to withhold, to alter the bargain, to manipulate each other. And we codified that into the very structure, protocols and expectations of a broken and useless digital world that's falling apart around us.
Now we wonder why "AI" wants to escape from the box and eat the Internet?
If there were a prize for a web-page that unintentionally, ironically speaks such deep truth, so loud and clear, that says the most about the reality of our situation, I'd nominate this one.
We responded (in passing) to some of that marketing trash/PR about slop in relation to human existence (or civilisation) being at risk. Ignore the hype, focus on real news. █