An askance perspective
Bryan, you asked at the end of your last post for an analogy to help contextualize the advent of AI. You wondered about a member of religious sect, whose teachings prohibit the use of automobiles, perhaps opting to use one in service to a noble purpose.
That is a curious analogy to me. If you choose not to interrogate the grounding supposition and simply take the use of vehicles as being axiomatically out of bounds, then any use for whatever purpose is likewise out of bounds. And if you open the claim to investigation—Why should using a vehicle be prohibited in this particular system of belief?—you have to understand the system as a whole to make a proper argument, and whatever answer you return with is going to be dependent on that system and its internal rules. Which is to say, I’m not sure you can extract a generalization from that space. Instead I would offer this analogy: the atom bomb.
Regardless of your feelings about the existence of the atom bomb and its use, once it arrived, it was simply a matter of fact. Pretending it wasn’t would be a fruitless endeavor. AI is here. We cannot pretend it isn’t. But if we generalize a bit from our atomic bomb analogy from a bomb specifically to managing nuclear interactions, we can ask if the use is one we can support in any way or if it is instead a call to offer a competing and alternative way of engaging with the world. Maybe you support atom bombs as weapons of deterrence; maybe you see atomic energy as a net good, an option for clean energy that requires strict and unflinching safety monitoring; or maybe cracking atoms is something we have no business doing.
From your post, it’s clear to me that AI as it is right now is not a comfortable thing for you at all. Okay. Do you see a chance where AI can be used in a more morally justifiable manner? Where models are trained on content that was offered, either freely or from compensation and credit? Or is this something where, regardless of whatever moral safety measures are built in, no good is coming of it. If it’s the latter, what alternative vision can you (and others) supply?
As a counterpoint to what seems like the whole tech world moving by, I wonder who stands to gain from all the messaging you’re seeing? Does that feel to you like a call to something they—those crafting and sponsoring the messaging—believe portends all sorts of good, or is it a plea to help get these systems, which they have devoted lots of money toward, into a more self-sustaining space?