[The following is a slightly expanded version of a recent tweet.]
Am I getting too old to have an opinion like this? Young techies, working in glass palaces w/ free lunches (we know better) & ping pong in the lobby, think they are helping the world. But they are just making it more and unnecessarily complicated, beyond our capabilities and our social systems to cope.
Driverless cars kill people in ways the techs didn’t foresee. They expect drivers to pay attention while the program runs! Don’t they know any actual drivers? How many people will have to die before we accept that human consciousness is a necessary part of using machines safely?
I am a computer nerd. I bought my first computer in 1981, and I have been tinkering with the hardware and software of my desktops and laptops ever since. I have been word-processing for 40 years. But I can’t intuit anymore how to make new software work. It does more than earlier versions and is certainly more complicated, but I can do less with it because I can’t figure out how to do the things I need to do.
These kids in Silicon Valley are fixated on artificial intelligence and machine learning, with only passing lip service to the potential negative consequences. And it stands to reason, if there is artificial intelligence, there will be artificial stupidity. Who will be responsible? The companies ask to be relieved of liability in case something bad happens. Isn’t the fear of losing lawsuits one of the few things that might keep us safe from their hubris?
Tech-obsessed youth, giddy about the profits they can make off of their addictive software, creating algorithms that they don’t fully understand, reaping billions of dollars, with no sense that our irresistible attraction to their lures ultimately will make us sad, sick, sleepless, lonely.
They hook little girls with Instagram posts that undercut self-esteem and maybe heighten the chances of suicide. Many of their customers are hooked on social media programs, spending hours scrolling their lives away. Do the techies care? It makes them obscenely rich, as they sell our attention to the highest bidders.
We have let these children design our future, not for the betterment of our lives, but for their own immense greed. With no forethought, planning or oversight. Maybe it is too late. Maybe the monsters they created are already eating us alive. No, we shouldn’t give up. We just need some grown-ups to step in and take away their toys.
