[HN Gopher] Margaret Mead, technocracy, and the origins of AI's ...
___________________________________________________________________
Margaret Mead, technocracy, and the origins of AI's ideological
divide
Author : benbreen
Score : 42 points
Date : 2023-11-21 14:37 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (resobscura.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (resobscura.substack.com)
| tgv wrote:
| Mead was famous, but only one of the many voices in very long
| debate. Whatever people were thinking 90 years ago, it had
| already lost its influence by the time of AI's societal debut in
| the 1980s and is totally irrelevant to AI's impact today. While
| both may share a mindset, linking Mead to today's techno-bros is
| a bit of a stretch.
| sctb wrote:
| > Mead was famous, but only one of the many voices in very long
| debate.
|
| Yes, this is how voices work.
|
| > Whatever people were thinking 90 years ago, it had already
| lost its influence by the time of AI's societal debut in the
| 1980s and is totally irrelevant to AI's impact today.
|
| Are you making this argument simply based on the passage of
| time? I can think of a lot of ideas whose longevity makes 90
| years seem a sneeze.
|
| > While both may share a mindset, linking Mead to today's
| techno-bros is a bit of a stretch.
|
| If they share a mindset, would that not be an obvious link?
| Additionally, this article is drawing a connection not just
| between Mead and techno-optimists (not the same as tech-bros),
| but between Mead and both techno-optimism and existential risk.
| That's sort of what the article's preamble describes as the
| interesting thing.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Why are you so intent on linking this woman to modern tech
| workers?
| dmead wrote:
| I'm a tech bro.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| We failed when we killed Cybernetics and AI became part of
| Computer Science instead of the multidisciplinary field it
| actually is
|
| Weiner was an outspoken socialist and was persecuted for it, to
| such an extent that Cybernetics got needled to death and AI
| became "simply a matter of computing."
|
| Hopefully we all see now how wrong that was
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Yep. If we don't get paperclipped then we're getting
| collectively BORG'ed. Free will? More like a tool by the system
| that controls the information reality around you.
| benbreen wrote:
| Author here. Thank you, I thought this was an interesting
| point. Researching the book this post is based on, I was really
| struck by who was actually attending the Macy cybernetic
| conferences -- it was incredibly eclectic. Anthropologists,
| physiologists, psychiatrists... and, of course, also Claude
| Shannon and von Neumann.
|
| Carving off computer science as a separate realm with less
| interdisciplinary input was definitely a fork in the road for
| the history of science.
|
| By the way, if anyone is interested, you can find the list of
| cybernetics conference attendees here: https://www.asc-
| cybernetics.org/foundations/history/MacyPeop...
|
| And if anyone is _really_ interested, here 's my book, which is
| coming out in January:
| https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/benjamin-breen/trip...
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Awesome. Glad to see there's other people out there that care
| and understand that "AI" fully understood, is marginally
| about the computer, and primarily about society.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The article references Hugo Gernsback - and one of the best
| literary criticisms of the techno-optimist utopia ideal can be
| found in William Gibson's short story, "The Gernsback Continuum".
|
| As far as the 'ideological divide' at OpenAI, the fact that
| they're all silent about the military contracting arm of their
| partner Microsoft as well as potential applications of LLMs to
| the military arena should be proof enough that their 'do-gooder'
| PR operation is nothing more than a branding and marketing game.
|
| I suppose you could argue that military dominance of the planet
| in the name of do-gooder agendas is just what we need, but that's
| always been little more than a justification for robbery of
| others, ever since the dawn of recorded history.
| c54 wrote:
| What're some of the military applications of LLMs?
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Influence ops, propaganda, etc
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Propaganda - now any language on earth. Coming soon -
| personalized with the voice of your loved ones, voice
| application are currently happily harvesting.
| Merrill wrote:
| Technology that may cause existential risk or risk of systemic
| collapse are one category including nuclear weapons, engineered
| pathogens, global warming, etc.
|
| Robotics disrupting the workforce and devaluing labor are another
| category continuing the process of mechanization and automation
| that started with small electrical motors and the electrification
| of factories.
|
| Artificial intelligence is in a third category because it
| threatens the disruption and impending devaluation of broad
| categories of intellectual work.
| lhoff wrote:
| I think the best summary of the whole devise that I came across
| is this one from today
|
| > ,,The OpenAI tussle is between the faction who think Skynet
| will kill them if they build it, and the faction who think Roko's
| Basilisk(,s Monster)will torture them if they don't build it hard
| enough."
|
| Source: https://mastodon.social/@jef/111443214445962022
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-21 23:00 UTC)