In a typical Black Mirror episode:
— David Deutsch (@DavidDeutschOxf) October 25, 2022
• An improvement plausibly on the horizon is imagined.
• It happens.
• Everything goes horribly wrong.
In the White Mirror I was advocating:
• An improvement plausibly on the horizon is imagined.
• It turns out much better than imagined.
This is "adjacent" to a problem I've been thinking about: Why is it that the prospect of Rogue AI's have become the focal point of an intellectual community (aka "cult") but utopian AI-mediated futures have not? Because imagining futures is much more difficult than breaking something that exists. Moreover, there are many possibilities for the future, representing various values. Getting people to agree on imagined futures would be difficult. Getting people to agree on protecting what we have is much easier, and so is a more plausible focus for community.
I had a class my senior year in high school, 1967-68, in which each student wrote a paper creating a utopia. We read works like Walden Two and studied the American utopian societies from the 1800's. I didn't have a clue about AI so naturally did not include it in my effort. - Jim Parker (can't seem to log or use my url)
ReplyDeleteYeah, login seems to be rather iffy. Alas.
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