Fear Algorithms, Not AI

For years, I closed most of my talks with the story of the fork. In 1000 CE, Venice outlawed it. The fork was a threat to humanity, an offense against the hand God gave us. The prohibition lasted 500 years.

It was my favorite example of how we always believe the end of humanity is just around the corner, and that we are to blame for it. Every generation gets its fork. The printing press. The novel. The bicycle, which was going to ruin women. Television. Headphones. Video games.

But not now. Not with Artificial Intelligence. This time it’s real.

Or not.

Tomorrow

If it is real — if AI will slowly and then suddenly replace humans, Because It Can™ — then the move is obvious: build the tools first. Whoever builds them, controls them. So fuel the construction. Win the race. Become the overlords who slowly and then suddenly take over everything.

In the history of our species, we have never invested so much into so few.

Not circumnavigation. Not the railroads. Not the telegraph. Not the fiber optic frenzy at the turn of the millennium. Not even the arms race of World War II.

The concentration of capital and literal energy into one new development — that may or may not, save or save not, humanity from something we are not even sure what it is, but it will happen, and very soon — is without precedent.

So we focus on this, and everything else waits. Education is so fundamental it can wait a couple more generations. And if we ever miss the wetlands, AGI SuperIntelligence™ Ultra Max will build us cheaper, faster ones. Right?

Imagine if we put that level of global concentration on fixing an actual, real problem. One should always dream.

Yesterday

The fear we should actually have is older, quieter, and already here.

We have been governed by algorithms for a very long time. Not all of them are bad. Calendars are algorithms. So is language. So is the harvest. They help us organize, remember, build things together. The trouble is what we do with the same talent when we point it at the reward centers of our own brains.

The fork was never dangerous. Neither was the novel, or television, or videogames. But each one taught us to feed the same hunger a little faster. Today it is a rectangle in our pocket that has optimized dopamine to the point that we only need to swipe a thumb to be happy for hours.

I apologize, that was rude. Sometimes we also tap. On a little heart — isn’t it beautiful? — and on some letters, and on cute emojis.

That is the algorithm that scares me.

Today

For a long time now it has been hard to communicate, get informed, or finish a task without some algorithm trying to keep you longer than you should stay, and if possible, get distracted and pay money.

Our whole financial system is a complex web of algorithms trying to optimize reward. With financial market algorithms being the only ones who treat every microsecond as if it were life or death (spoiler: they’re not), dragging the rest of the economy with it at a pace that is totally fake.

Our need for speed is fake.

And this isn’t only digital. There are armies of delivery humans on bicycles and scooters whose every task is designated by an algorithm. You request a ride and the price changes while you’re looking at it, not because the world changed but just because you checked twice. Today. Not next quarter. And it doesn’t run on world-bending Mythos.

That is what should hold our attention. The present. What’s right in front of our faces. Not a constant new future, different from all past futures, because this time, really, yes, finally, humanity is facing an impending, unprecedented, inevitable catastrophe just around the corner. So let’s keep double-tapping into the future, because today will soon be yesterday.

That’s scary.

But nothing about it is inevitable.