Why I'm not worried about AI
What you are about to read was originally written in May 2023; I've been thinking about it recently, and I think it still holds up.
So I spent some time last night lurking the segment of the social internet that is worried about AI.
It's either "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WILL INEVITABLY KILL US ALL" or "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WILL DO EVERYTHING SO MUCH BETTER THAN US THAT WE MIGHT AS WELL GIVE UP."
I'm not worried about either of these possibilities.
Yes, if AI follows the rationalist trajectory and eventually kills us all, then we'll all end up dead.
Extinct, even.
Just as dead – and just as extinct – as we would have ended up after the heat death of the universe, or any of the other extinction-level events that might hit us before the universe finally packs it in.
Our physical bodies have always been doomed, both in the individual and in the aggregate. We are finite beings.
Which brings me to the second possibility. AI will be so good at everything that there will be no reason for humans to even, like, try. Might as well plug ourselves into AI-generated entertainment and wait to be turned into paper clips, amirite?
Um...
Ummmmmmmmm...
UMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM........
Okay, here's the deal.
There are already humans who are better at doing things than you are.
Really good writers have never stopped humans from trying to be really good writers.
Really good actors have never stopped humans from trying to be really good actors.
Really good pianists – and here's where it gets interesting, because there is theoretically no reason for me to learn any music at all, not after people like Arthur Rubinstein have made enough recordings that anyone can listen to him play the best of the repertoire at any time, there is literally no reason for me to play a piece he has already played, so why even bother?
Because every day I get to sit at my keyboard and work towards an infinite unity that I am only just starting to understand.
Sometimes we call it magic, or mastery, or excellence, or 1:1 communication, or whatever results from a series of continuous efficiencies.
I called it happiness, once.
And humans have never stopped trying to pursue that happiness – we kept writing plays after Shakespeare, we kept making movies after Hollywood's Golden Era, we keep coming up with new programming languages, we study chess even though the artificial intelligence engines already know all of the best moves.
We still write love letters, even though our handwriting is less readable than Hallmark's. We still bake bread – or crack an egg over a bowl of cake mix, or reserve a table at one of our favorite restaurants – even though there are at least five different nutritional slurry companies ready to provide us with everything we need in a single optimized beverage.
Some people don't do any of these things with mastery in mind.
But if you do, it changes everything.
Including how you may feel about AI.
