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Former banker; author, Extreme Money and Traders, Guns, and Money
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In his novel Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon identifies the confusion about the subject and object of inquiries: “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” Thinking about machines that think poses more questions about human beings than about the machines or artificial intelligence.
Technology enables machines that provide access to essential resources, power, speed, and communications, making improved living standards and even life possible. Machines execute tasks specified and programmed by humans. Techno-optimists believe that progress is near a Singularity, the hypothetical moment when machines will reach the point of greater-than-human intelligence.
It’s a system of belief and faith. Just like the totems and magic used by our ancestors or organized religion, science and technology deal with uncertainty and fear of the unknown. They allow limited control over our immediate environment. They increase material prosperity and comfort. They constitute a striving for perfectibility and assert human superiority in the pantheon of creation.
But science is a long way from unlocking the secrets in nature’s infinite book. Knowledge of the origins of the universe and of life, of the fundamentals of matter, remains limited. Biologist E. O. Wilson noted that if natural history were a library of books, we would not even have finished reading the first chapter of the first book. Human knowledge is always incomplete, sometimes inaccurate, and frequently the cause of problems rather than their solution.
1. The use of science and technology is often ineffective and rife with unintended consequences:
In Australia, introduced rabbits spread rapidly, becoming a pest, changing Australia’s ecosystems, destroying endemic species. In the 1950s, scientists introduced the Myxoma virus, severely reducing the rabbit population. When genetic resistance allowed the population to recover, Calicivirus, which causes rabbit hemorrhagic disease, was introduced as a new control measure, and, again, increasing immunity rapidly reduced effectiveness. In 1935, the cane toad was introduced to control insect pests of sugarcane. Unsuccessful in controlling the insects, the amphibian became an invasive species, devastating indigenous wildlife.
The prevalence of lifesaving antibiotics has increased drug-resistant infections. A 2014 British study found that these so-called superbugs may cause 10 million deaths a year worldwide by 2050, with a potential cost to the global economy of US$100 trillion.
Economic models have repeatedly failed because of incorrect assumptions, flawed causal relationships, inputs that are more noise than data, and unanticipated human factors. Forecasts have proved inaccurate. Models consistently underestimate risks and exposures, resulting in financial crises.
2. The consequences of technology, especially over longer terms, are frequently not understood at inception:
The ability to harness fossil fuels to provide energy was the foundation of the Industrial Revolution. The long-term impact of CO2 emissions on the environment now threatens the survival of the species. Theoretical physics and mathematics made possible nuclear and thermonuclear devices capable of extinguishing all life on the planet.
3. Technology creates moral, ethical, political, economic, and social concerns that are frequently ignored:
Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction and remotely controlled drones rely on technical advances. The question remains as to whether such technology should be used or developed at all. Easy access to the requisite knowledge, problems of proliferation, and the difficulty of controlling dual use (civilian and defense) technology complicates the matter.
Robots and AI may improve productivity. While a few creators might capture large rewards, the effect on economic activity will be limited. Given that consumption constitutes over 60 percent of activity in developed economies, decreasing employment and lower income levels harm the wider economy. While taking UAW head Walter Reuther on a tour of Ford’s new automatically operated plant in the early 1950s, a company executive asked him, “How are you going to collect union dues from these guys [the robots]?” Reuther countered, “And how are you going to get them to buy Fords?”
When it comes to questions of technology, the human race is rarely logical. We frequently do not concede that something cannot or should not be done. Progress is accepted without question or understanding of what we need to know and why. We don’t know when or where or how our creations should be used, or their limits. Often we don’t know the real or full consequences. Doubters are dismissed as Luddites.
Technology and its manifestations—such as machines, or AI—are illusions appealing to human ambition and vanity, multiplying confusion in poet T. S. Eliot’s “wilderness of mirrors.” The human species is simply too small, insignificant, and inadequate to fully succeed in anything we think we can do. Thinking about machines that think merely confirms that inconvenient truth.
