We can't escape AI, but we can shape its future (links 3)
And Industrial Strategy is so hot right now; The Tiktok of text
In this week’s newsletter: Should we fear AI? Can we opt out? Will it take our jobs?; Industrial strategy is in vogue - from right to left, except in the UK; And the Titok of text.
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An article in the Atlantic by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, about whether Chat GPT's arrival is good for humanity — and a tweet by writer LM Sacasas piqued my interest.
Sacasas quoted Austrian Ivan Illich, a catholic priest, public intellectual and noted critic of industrial society, its institutions and technology. With the rise of social media, many intellectuals have dusted off Ivan Illich. And you can expect more reaching for him as the age of AI dawns.
This particular quote can be read as both a warning on social media and large language models (LLMs), like GPT3, which has been trained on the text of the World Wide Web.
In Illich's view, economic development often does not result in human flourishing but rather 'modernized poverty,' dependency, and an out-of-control system in which humans are not the masters of technology but have become reduced to worn-out mechanical parts.
In Illich's view, economic development often does not result in human flourishing but rather 'modernized poverty,' dependency, and an out-of-control system in which humans are not the masters of technology but have become reduced to worn-out mechanical parts.
Illich proposed that we should "invert the present deep structure of tools" in order to give people alternatives that guarantee our right to work independently and be in control of our lives.
Opportunities for personal fulfilment are as large as the universe itself
That Reid Hoffman's takes the opposite view should surprise no one. Hoffman is an investor in OpenAI, the entity behind the bot in the limelight, Chat GPT. But he is unusually thoughtful for a billionaire tech entrepreneur1.
Hoffman does warn of the importance of enlightened and responsible leadership by tech founders, but none the less sees in tools like Chat GPT a future -
"in which opportunities for personal fulfilment are as large as the universe itself."
"If we merely lived up to our scientific classification—Homo sapiens—and just sat around thinking all day, we’d be much different creatures than we actually are. A more accurate name for us is Homo techne: humans as toolmakers and tool users. The story of humanity is the story of technology.
Technology is the thing that makes us us. Through the tools we create, we become neither less human nor superhuman, nor post-human. We become more human."
We are Cyborgs
Personally, I'm on team Donna Haroway. She wrote the Cyborg Manifesto in 1985 to make the following points described colourfully in this blog post by sociologist PJ Patella-Rey.
Haroway agrees with Hoffman that humans and technology are inseparable. What's more, she thinks the impact of technology on our lives can not simply be opted out of.
As much as those who refused to drive motor vehicles were still impacted by the massive change in how our cities looked and worked due to the advance of cars, we cannot escape our socio-technical circumstances.
So we can opt out of using social media and AI, but it will still impact our lives, for example, by helping determine who gets elected. Unlike Illich, Haroway recognises no ideal past, but unlike Hoffman, she does not think technology will necessarily lead us to a brighter future. Technology isn't good or bad, but it is a place where politics happens.
And that’s important because its politics that determines technology’s impact on our lives: Good or bad.
And its politics that determines technology’s impact on our lives…
Will AI take our jobs?
Hoffman mentions it as a concern - what AI could do to jobs. The Gradient podcast has a great interview with Steve Miller, a Professor Emeritus of Information Systems at Singapore Management University. Steve works closely with a number of Singapore government ministries and agencies via steering committees, advisory boards, and advisory appointments.
In this long in-depth discussion, Miller makes a number of important practical points. How different is this “industrial revolution” to those that went before? Ultimately Miller sounds like Haroway.
Whether AI ends up immiserating or empowering most people depends on how we decide to apply it.
Industrial policy is so hot right now.
That's a headline from the FT, and it's bang on. Industrial policy is in vogue - and most economists consider it to be positive for global economic growth. It seems that everybody agrees, from the right (yes even Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley) to the left, even the centrists in the EU.
Here is a podcast featuring Adam Tooze on how Biden has killed off the influence of the World Trade Organisation. And here is Bloomberg on how Biden's misnamed Inflation Reduction Act is forcing Europe to react - a race to the top for clean tech.
Actually, not everyone agrees. The UK, whose Kwasi Kwarteng recently ditched its industrial strategy because it was ultimately ideologically incompatible with the then-ascendant libertarian wing of the Tories - are now very worried about being left in the dust by the US, Europe and China.
But isn't this a return to nationalist protectionism and even mercantilism? Tyler Cowan, who these days call himself a state capacity libertarian, argues it's not. Rather it's competition between states:
Even the most successful “nationalistic” industrial policies rely on a highly globalized world. If carried out strictly on a one-nation basis, industrial policy is doomed to fail. Globalization has been so thorough, and has gone so well, that at least a little industrial policy is now thinkable for many nations.
The Tiktok of text
The co-founder of Instagram is launching a competitor to Twitter, Artefact, that will, like Tiktok, not depend on social networks but be completely algorithmically curated via machine learning.
He reckons it will be more meritocratic, as your status as determined by your social network will matter less.
Hoffman has a masters in philosophy from Oxford University. Do listen to this fantastic interview with Tyler Cowen to get a sense of his wide-ranging perspectives. Did I mention Cowen’s podcasts before? If I had to take one podcast to a desert island, his would be it.