On being nuts
Several AI thinkpieces are setting the tech commentary world alight right now. Especially Thomas Ptacek’s deliberately provocative “My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts”.
“I’m sipping rocket fuel right now,” a friend tells me. “The folks on my team who aren’t embracing AI? It’s like they’re standing still.”
If the shoe fits, as they say, then wear it. As an AI skeptic myself, you should imagine me wearing Vibram FiveFingers because, yes, I am nuts.
Not wanting to dive headlong into AI productivity technology is but one expression of my madness.
I was raised a Christian, and I chose to become a Quaker in recent years because the traditional testimonies of the Religious Society of Friends spoke to me so strongly. Here they are:
- Simplicity
- Peace
- Integrity
- Community
- Equality
- Stewardship (of the Earth and nature)
Take a moment to reflect on how these values speak to the choice to use AI technology as it currently exists. I’m not asking you to come to the same implied conclusion I have, but simply to consider these six testimonies. Hold them in your mind for a few moments.
Note the absences. Productivity. Efficiency. Profitability. Innovation.
Not valuing those things most highly is Certifiably Nuts. It’s toe-shoes-wearing nonsense that, applied to other questions, has caused conflict in my professional and personal life.
So many of the issues with generative AI technologies are already present in our world-destructive economic systems. AI just adds extra rocket fuel to the fire.
We were already destroying our climate; now we’ll destroy it a little faster. We were already in a post-truth epistemic crisis; now we have one more layer of misinformation. It was already a harsh market for junior software developers; now it’ll be more so.
There are people pointing this out, people who have rational objections, people who have aesthetic objections, people who simply feel grossed out. It is not pleasant to be told that you must embrace yet another thing which does not agree with your value system.
These people aren’t going to contribute much to GDP.
They are all nuts.
Like the prophets before them.
Hi ho.