The paradigm of computing abides. There’s Input and Compute and Output and, with all certainty, Memory is crucial too. This is basic, but it has been enough to maintain attention and spur curiosity over a career. Overlaying this is the world and how this computer paradigm succeeds and/or fades in the raucous ecosystem of humankind.
This is writ a week after a heaping helping of raucous humankindness – after Generative AI had its Wild Knives-Out Weekend. This saw, to summarize, the firing and rehiring of CEO Sam Altman, also known as the Most Important Person for the Future of the World.
Too, this is writ by one who came to maturity as the powerful trains met: Better Living through Electricity encountered Do Not Bend, Fold, Spindle or Mutilate. Back in the day. The rise of automation and computerization raised concerns about dehumanization, yes. It was a concern of think tanks – as well as writers and readers, and film directors and movie audiences — in the 1950s and 1960s.
But there was tentative optimism too. One ironic twist: seers of the day worried about the future of an American Culture that would suddenly have too much leisure time. Anyone that has worked late to create a spreadsheet, toggle through the steps to reboot a printer, or fill out an online form must find some irony in that. Or anyone who noticed the cookies that follow them around and guess at their needs as they use the WWW.
So be it with some seers.
Of course, the basic blocks of computation get programmed. One result is the neural network, which in recent years has emerged steadily ‘from the lab.” Schools of programming and venture capital rise up around the simple compute blocks.
Funny but the neural network – now known as AI — has spawned new takes on old schools of thought. These are helpfully layered atop the technology with some commercial intent.
And, they vie in the market of ideas today. Under the leaky umbrellas of Effective Altruism and Effective Accelerationism, an odd take on the neural net has taken hold. It’s held that the neurals will achieve general intelligence that will push machines past humans. The Altruists with their concern that Sam Altman was moving too quickly to this precipice, lost a round last week to the Accelerators, in the Knives-Out Shoot-Out.
This in turn follows an effectively disruptive blow-out of blockchain and Web 3.0 technology at the hands EAff and EAcc, mostly due to the missteps of Sam Bankman-Fried, formerly Most Important Person for the Future of the World.
We need a good quick read on this topic and blogger and software engineer Molly White has published just such a piece. It’s the impetus for this brief essay. It’s not an on-the-one hand/on-the-other-hand type of essay White provides in “Effective Obfuscation.” Yet it is quite meritorious in my opinion. It’s a good tonic for the blues that hits you as you think of Mosaic co-inventor Mark Andreessen’s recent manifesto on Silicon Valley greatness. And a level-headed appreciation of just what happened last weekend.
Short-hand White synopsis: The “effective altruism” and “effective accelerationism” ideologies that have been cropping up in AI debates are just a thin veneer over the typical blend of Silicon Valley techno-utopianism, inflated egos, and greed. Let’s try something else, she writes.
It’s my opinion that Fear of AI is overdone today mainly in the interest of the Hype Machine. A name for this was well-conjured by Molly White as “Effective Obfuscation” [My 2002 take on Obfuscation.] Concern over The Continuing Culture of Bend and Mutilate is real and needs to be addressed. But the neural network deserves better. – J.V.
Noting another worthy assessment here: The AI Doomers have lost the Battle – Benedikt Evans FT.com