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.
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.
Ursula Franklin said “peace is not the absence of war, but the absence of fear”.
The context, from an interview about the use of force in the pursuit of peace, is:
Peace, for me, is a consequence of justice.
For that reason, peace is defined, not as the absence of war, but as the absence of fear.
And for that reason I am convinced that means that are unjust or violent cannot, even for the best of reasons, provide peace.
This is a high bar.
No enforced ceasefire, no polite society with deadly force in its grin, no economic end of history where war is merely too expensive to capital.
Instead, justice is present, fear is absent, war naturally evaporated.
Identifying fear with the cause of conflict reframes war as an emotional response - not as a reasonable, rational, regrettable but sadly inevitable way humans tend to behave.
The Religious Society of Friends has since its founding been known for its peace testimony.
It sits alongside several other denominations and movements known as “peace churches” which place particular emphasis on nonviolence and pacifism.
These churches generally concur that violence on behalf of nations and their governments is contrary to Christian morality, but agree that the teachings of Jesus were to explain the principles of the Kingdom of God rather than and contrasted with the ways of any earthly government.
An example of this emphasis is in the Quaker approach to aid and development.
From a Quaker Service Australia report on a project in Cambodia:
KCD has demonstrated how language skills training can promote inter-ethnic peace in other locations.
A shared language is a critical prerequisite for promoting understanding between these diverse ethnic communities …
This project provides ethnic Vietnamese children with the language skills they need to overcome many of their current disadvantages and provides opportunities for children from different ethnic groups to work and play together.
… With the start of Khmer language classes, most Vietnamese children are learning Khmer for the first time.
A focus on material needs is important, but a distinctly Quaker-flavored form of community development is to focus on the language barrier that allows fear and estrangement to survive.
For the first time since 1868, Quakers are not meeting for worship on Devonshire Street in Sydney.
The increasing financial pressure of owning heritage-listed property in the City of Sydney, including regulatory changes and steeply increasing insurance costs, made it untenable for us to keep the property.
Many of us are sad to leave behind the history that happened in that building, to no longer continue meeting between the walls that housed so much community.
Many of us are looking forward to shedding the burden the property was putting on the meeting, financially and in the energy and effort that was needed to manage it.
We are now meeting in a light, pleasant room in Pilgrim House on Pitt street.
We have downsized.
A church can be anywhere two or more are gathered together.
Yearly Meeting is the annual gathering of all Australian Quakers.
This was my first time at an in-person Yearly Meeting, having only started to attend Quaker meetings in late 2019. And I was so glad that I decided to come!
I deeply appreciated experiencing the formal sessions and seeing how the Society conducts its business.
This, on paper, was something that had attracted me to Quakerism as I was just learning about it.
But being in a large room full of Friends patiently expressing themselves and building up in the spirit of unity really helped me understand it deeply.
Even though I was only able to attend the final Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I was overwhelmed in the best possible way.
The chance to meet Friends from other cities and states was a blessing.
Our community may be small, but its vitality and vivaciousness were evident!
I got the sense that many others were relieved to be meeting in person again after years of online Meetings.
I am very much looking forward to the next time we can do so.
