Don’t Panic
The comedic writer Douglas Adams said that the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had the words “Don’t Panic!” emblazoned on its cover in large, friendly letters. As Adams might have said, that is a pretty neat idea, if only we would bother to try.
“But why not panic?” some might be wondering. It seems to be the quickest natural response for us collectively to news about almost anything: climate change, hostile foreign governments, the internet, collapsing banks. It’s the natural response, so it must be closest to the truth, right? You feel it in your gut, and since when has your gut led you astray?
A case in point recently has been the brewing panic among some in the tech community that artificial intelligence (AI) is about to lead us to total, foreseeable civilizational destruction. Or, falling short of that, something close enough to it as to be virtually indistinguishable.
A surprising menagerie of tech wizards published a letter to, uh, humanity, maybe—the exact intended recipient is unclear. The letter warned that AI needs to be paused for at least a half a year while our species prepares. Otherwise, Armageddon will be breathing down our necks. The technology needs to be put on hold while we figure out what the hell is going on, as you might say. It’s like the technology is ringing the doorbell, and you’ve just stepped out of the shower wrapped in nothing more than a towel. But the front door is only a glass storm door, and the technology is looking inside, so you can’t pretend you’re not home. At the same time, the tech is peering in at the room you need to traverse in order to get to your clothes. You’re wishing it would go away so you could have a few moments of privacy to get ready for visitors.
It seems unlikely there’s any chance of getting ready, though. We’ll just have to deal with the consequences as they appear. Which itself presumes the worst outcomes have a high chance of prevailing, based on the evidence we can conjure in our own minds. And what are the actual odds that any pause could be enforced? Wouldn’t the tech laggards simply take advantage of the intermission to continue developing it in private and out of the public view? That is, after all, how it was developed before it went public a couple months ago when OpenAI’s ChatGPT burst onto the scene. Besides, it overlooks the potential for AI to improve people’s lives—something else we aren’t good at predicting in advance.
I could go on from here with the familiar riff about our bias toward the negative getting the better of us. But instead I leave you with a couple links to negative and positive assessments.
I haven't seen the hawks so far since the weather got nicer, but, today I got a close up look at a bald eagle, ( earlier, I thought they were eagles, but they were too high for me to really see, and I wasn't sure if it was the bald ones or the golden ones) .
So. very large one with this awesome wing span flew low enough when I was looking out the front door that I could see the white head and wings...and I am so excited, never saw one up close before...
They are quite majestic ( I think there are young juveniles too, several much smaller ones were in the sky below this one the other day)
Re AI:
What if it gets better at puns than me? 😱
What would Phil do if an army of chatgptbots flooded this discussion with bad TSAF puns? He might run out of doors?