Many people are succumbing to hysteria(1) when it comes to A.I. I understand why people feel this way. But I think it is important for people to know that some of this hysteria is being whipped up by many of those in the A.I. industry. To see what I mean, I recommend you read this piece by Dave Karpf: The A.I. Industry will never rein itself in. Some of his key points:
- What A.I. insiders say “isn’t just marketing hype. These guys do believe what they are saying.”
- “But, also, just because they believe it doesn’t mean we should believe them. Practically the entire AI safety community is also part of the Rationalist community….Rationalism is essentially a cult. They have all talked themselves into the same extreme belief structures and conclusions. These are not impartial scientific experts. They are ideologues, imbued with practically limitless resources.”
- “And, also, one byproduct of these dire warnings is yet another cycle of marketing hype. As Ryan Broderick puts it, “the AI industry wants us to keep talking about AI like this.”
- “An important thing to understand about these Rationalist fanatics is that they fundamentally believe they are more gifted and talented than everyone else.”
- “Sam Altman and Elon Musk and (yes, even) Dario Amodei will say whatever is in their best immediate-term interest to say. And any promises they make will be abandoned as soon as those promises become inconvenient. Each of these companies wants to win the AI race. Each of these individuals has convinced himself that the fate of humanity rests on his company essentially building-digital-god first. (And, certainly, before China builds-digital-god.)”
I don’t have specific recommendations to the bigger problems that A.I. might cause that can be typed up in a blog post. I do have a recommendation that could help people think more rationally about A.I. which can reduce the fear you might have towards this new technology. That solution is based on what I learned by using cognitive based therapy.
To see what I mean, let’s take some examples of thoughts you might think about A.I.:
- All A.I. output is garbage
- A.I. is going to take all the jobs
- A.I. is going to kill us all
- A.I. is going to fill the world with slop (slop music, slop art, slop writing)
- Everyone is going to cheat because they have access to A.I.
- Everyone is going to stop thinking and just use A.I.
- I hate A.I., it makes me sick
In each of these cases there is a form of irrational thinking that can be replaced by more rational thinking. Using this worksheet, you can label such thoughts as: Emotional thinking, Black and white thinking, Catastrophic thinking, Rejecting the positive, Jumping to Conclusions and more. Examining your thinking and adjusting it to be less irrational doesn’t mean you have to like A.I.: it just means you can think about it in such a way that it doesn’t cause you to feel…well, hysterical.
All new technology that is widely adopted is socially and personally transformative. Since we don’t know how we are going to be transformed, it can cause us to feel anxious. And when others fan the flames of our anxiety, it is not difficult to go from feeling a bit anxious to feeling unmanageable fear (i.e. feel hysterical). I would urge you to examine how you are thinking about this new technology and do so in a way that is rational and does not cause you to fear. Because if you can do that, you can better manage how you deal with the transformation (even if that means rejecting the technology all together).
(1: Hysteria in this case takes the textbook definition of “exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess”)
P.S. there is more to CBT than taking a worksheet and applying it. But it is a good first step.
