I used ChatGPT to make this picture depicting Atlantis shortly before they discovered advanced AI and destroyed themselves.
Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary were very interested in computer technology, and typically technology positive, but alas they left us before AI really got going. I wish I knew what they would have said.
I have been reading many articles lately about the purported dangers and benefits of AI. One article I would particularly recommend is a Substack piece by Tracing Woodgrains, We Will Never Have “Normal Times” Again. Here is a bit of it:
Forget your instinct to dismiss, honed by years of promises of a crypto revolution or NFTs or another Next Big Thing, while all that changed in your life was a new iPhone and the social media takeover of the world. Forget all of that, and just look. Five years ago, you probably did not know what OpenAI was, and Anthropic barely even existed. Five years ago, if you wanted to get a computer to do something, you wrote by hand in machine-tailored language.
The article pairs well with the Fareed Zakaria piece I mentioned in this earlier blog post. I got zero comments, but I am happy with that post.
If you want optimistic takes on AI, you can read Richard Hanania and Deep Left Analysis For pessimism, there a new Michael Johnson and Ted Gioia.
In a comment for the Hanania piece, one of my favorite bloggers, Scott Sumner, wrote: "While I am pretty dismissive of the jobs fears associated with AI, I am agnostic on the safety issue. I don't know enough to have an intelligent opinion, but FWIW my biggest fear is not misalignment, it's alignment. More specifically, AI alignment with a rogue scientist that wishes to produce a global pandemic--the virologist equivalent of that Malaysian pilot that ditched his plane in South Indian Ocean. Again, I have no idea if that's possible, but I worry more about evil people working with cooperative machines than I do about evil machines."
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