Writing on the editorial page of the New York Times on Monday this week, three humanist technology researchers delivered this prediction: artificial intelligence (A.I.) is probably going to destroy humanity within the next few years.
In “If We Don’t Master A.I., It Will Master Us,” Yuval Noah Harari, Tristan Harris, and Aza Raskin describe a world controlled by “nonhuman intelligence” that “knows how to exploit with superhuman efficiency the weaknesses, biases and addictions of the human mind…. A curtain of illusions could descend over the whole of humanity, and we might never again be able to tear that curtain away — or even realize it is there.”
I expect the main reaction to their essay will be that the authors are labeled “Luddites” — hopelessly out-of-touch technophobes — even though they are all distinguished scholars and computer scientists. The increasingly rapid advances of new technology, and especially of A.I., are inevitable, aren’t they?
I know all about being a Luddite. I’ve been called that myself ever since I contributed to a critique of the use of computers in schools called Fool’s Gold. But most journalists, I think, would agree with Harari, Harris, and Raskin saying the A.I. behind social media has “increased societal polarization, undermined our mental health and unraveled democracy.”
The original 19th-century Luddites weren’t the violent thugs of popular mythology who went around smashing machines because they opposed technological progress. They were in fact skilled machine operators in the English textile industry who began in 1811 to protest widespread unemployment and poverty caused by the Napoleonic wars.
Writing in Smithsonian magazine in 2011, Richard Coniff says that, for the Luddites, “technology wasn’t really the enemy.” There had been episodes starting as early as the 1760s of the breaking of knitting machines by some who feared they would displace traditional hand-workers’ jobs. But the Luddites of the 1810s “were totally fine with machines,” Coniff reports. “They confined their attacks to manufacturers who used machines in what they called ‘a fraudulent and deceitful manner’ to get around standard labor practices.”
Historian Kevin Binfield, Coniff writes, found that the Luddites “just wanted machines that made high-quality goods.” They also wanted the machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages.
My daily spam now includes multiple offers from companies peddling A.I.-based solutions to the problem that reporting and editing news stories is costly and tedious work. Their A.I.-generated articles are “certain to grow our market.”
The Independent’s editorial page has up till now been nonpartisan. No more. I am hereby declaring, unequivocally, our support for the New Luddite Party.
Opposition to fraud and deceit; defense of high-quality work, apprenticeship, and decent wages. Machines that actually do what human beings need them to do — not what artificial intelligence decides should be done. That’s our platform. Join us.
