Why are we staking our future on synthetic intelligence when the downsides of doing so are so apparent and profound, and doubtlessly irreversible?
We’re at a fork within the highway of human historical past; we are able to proceed following the present path towards larger and deeper technological reliance, and surrendering to the implications of that selection. Or, we are able to determine to chart a radically totally different course.
We will — nonetheless — select to chorus from diving headfirst into this AI experiment on human consciousness. We will determine to not do what we all know we can do. As people who basically wish to be completely satisfied and don’t wish to endure, we are able to select not to be seduced and hypnotized by the thrill, greed and competitiveness of the tech wizards in Silicon Valley.
As a psychotherapist and interfaith minister, I can say with certainty that expertise, in the best way we’re utilizing it, has change into an impediment to our general happiness and well-being. Expertise is severely damaging younger individuals’s means to attach interpersonally and luxuriate in themselves. The surgeon common has decided that the psychological well being of younger individuals is “the defining well being disaster of our time.” And but we proceed ahead — speed up sooner and more durable down the identical path, commit extra fiercely to AI as the nice resolution to life.
Why can we proceed hurling ourselves towards what is going to most definitely change into an existential disaster for our society? Why are we surrendering our autonomy and agreeing to be dominated by a technological wizard who doesn’t perceive or care about us people having fun with good lives — a wizard very similar to HAL the pc, which Stanley Kubrick imagined in his prophetic 1968 movie “2001: A Area Odyssey.”
We proceed within the title of what we name “progress,” which we outline as that which creates extra effectivity, is extra productive, cuts prices, and finally, generates income. So too, “progress” is no matter permits us to do much less, removes some life duties, and guarantees to make issues simpler and sooner. The top purpose, or so it appears, is to change into passengers in our personal lives, even when it’s a digital Frankenstein who’s driving the bus.
The issue, nonetheless, is that our definition of “progress” and obsession with pursuing it advantages solely a small variety of individuals, those that additionally reap huge monetary rewards and energy from this method.
What if happiness and well-being have been what we pursued, thought of “progress,” and designed our society round? What if our purpose as a society have been to create life for its members, a life we take pleasure in and wish to inhabit? What if we targeted on our expertise of dwelling moderately than on an concept of “progress” that makes so many individuals not wish to stay? Can we modify at this stage of the evolutionary sport — redefine “progress” such that it means studying to be OK the place we’re, not at all times have to maneuver ahead at epic pace, and chorus from chasing each chance no matter whether or not it’s good for us or that we even need?
Regardless of the whole lot we all know and straight expertise with expertise, the way it impacts and harms our youngsters, and regardless of our society’s multigenerational epidemic of hysteria, loneliness, and despair, nonetheless, we maintain pushing ahead, doubling down on expertise — going after no matter we are able to assume up, just because we can assume it. We do that irrespective of the price, providing up our lives and ourselves as kindling within the bonfire we name “progress.”
We can not quit on well-being and happiness because the objectives for our society, and can’t give up management of our lives to an AI wizard simply because it tells us we must always, and shall be good for us. What extra do we have to know, or uncover, so as to have the ability to step off this practice of relentless “progress,” to take our foot off the accelerator and reevaluate what we actually need, what actually issues to us as people, and the way we wish to design (and stay) our lives?
