to accept it being controlled by Musk and Thiel and other lunatics who were amusing when parodied in Mountainhead last year, but have to be stopped from destroying the world.
I wish we didn't face this challenge. Trump is bad enough, without genAI and the tech bros.
When I first got online 40 years ago, spending a couple of years moderating a forum focused on high tech and ethics and weapons and politics, it was a smaller online world and I brought in a new friend who was a spokesman for a group of scientists concerned with ethics (not UCS though he became friends with their head), and we were positioned to debate the issues with someone on the other side who was rather prominent, and who hated losing debates. These debates are about basic ethical issues, and that's especially important when the technology being pushed is flawed - as it was then, too. Because people recognized those flaws, those reckless tech plans didn't come to fruition.
That was a long time ago. My old friend and comod is gone now, sadly, much too young. I would have loved to hear what he'd have had to say about genAI. It would have been colorful as well as passionate. He could get really angry about people and groups who were unethical.
I'd rather be spending more time now with musician friends than worrying about crazy AI bros and Trump. Back in 2022 I felt quite certain Biden would be reelected, and I hadn't heard of ChatGPT. But suddenly genAI emerged as a threat, and somehow Trump got elected again, and here we are.
I hope your youngest son stops viewing AI as inevitable. GenAI is inherently flawed, and there's no path from hallucinating chatbots to real AGI, let alone ASI. It can still cause a lot of problems, from deliberate or unintentional misinformation to flawed code being used way too many places. But I still expect the hype to die down and some sanity to return. The artists and teachers opposing genAI haven't given up, and I don't think they will.
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