The rich and powerful have hijacked progress throughout history, says Daron Acemoğlu. They did so back in the Middle Ages and also now in the age of artificial intelligence. In an interview, the MIT economist dives into the question of whether Silicon Valley is plunging humanity into destitution.
I agree, but sometimes I think, imagine you were in the middleages and your village just gets raided by a Ghengis Khan battalion or a Viking tribe or something, your wife and daughter get raped and killed in front of you, your frinds killed, you get chosen for blood eagle for later on in the day. Wtv middleages scenario, or any other ancient lawless period of time you choose, these events were not that much unlikely to happen. What word do we use for that? Not dystopian but what? Were things ever better than what they are now? Maybe democracy was an interesting experience, convenient for times when the beer flows easy out of the barril, and everyone's happy. Now, the tide is changing, ressources are scarce, environment is changing, we're now 8 billion and counting. Maybe dystopian times were always inevitable. I will resist it sure, but, thinking rationally, there doesn't seem to be a lot of hope honestly. Unless Aliens show up to straighten us up or something wild like that.
What I like about this interview is that it demonstrates the absurd, thought-terminating clichés that modern elites use...and Acemoğlu just steamrolls them. Like this:
DER SPIEGEL: But it is true that humankind has indeed benefited a lot from new technologies.
Acemoğlu: That is the reason we have to go so far back in history. The argument that you just gave is wrong. In the past, we’ve always had struggles over the uses of innovation and who benefits from them. Very often, control was in the hands of a narrow elite. Innovation often did not benefit the broad swaths of the population.
There was no argument. A sentence does not an argument make. But regular people trying to argue from a similar perspective would say "...well, yes, but..." whereas Acemoğlu is just like "Nope. You're wrong."
Edit: After a several hours and many responses, it demonstrates that the terminating cliché of "...but humanity has benefited from progress" isn't a counter-argument. What are the premises of the asserted conclusion? Had Der Spiegel been more clear about how he'd arrived at that conclusion in context, the conversation would've been significantly easier to follow. So, remember that: don't just assert shit; explain yourself.
Humanity is already plunging into dystopia without AI. Changing A.I. Doesn't matter as much as changing our economic system, and flaunting of wealth and power to ensure it only gets worse. A.I. Just makes it more immediate and obvious.
I'm really worried about what will happen when a paradigm-changing technology is in the hands of a precious few. The last few times went alright. But will this time be different?
The last time was social media, and that hasn't has benefited anyone except the shithead billionaires who got rich off of it. Social media is an astounding disaster.
The Fediverse is the first pebble rolling down the hill of corporate internet. 3D printers, AI generated media, right to repair, modular phones and laptops, all are the beginning of the end of mega tech companies in the consumer sphere. Our grandchildren will look at us the same way we look at medieval societies.