I'm on the record saying I think some of the concerns about what AI models could soon be capable of doing genuinely worry me. I do not think the potential threat is purely based on the imagination of billionaires who, like myself, have read too many science fiction books. When 1984 was written the world it described wasn't technically feasible, but it will be soon.
At the same time, I'm also optimistic that AI could lead us to a new golden age that will make our current levels of medicine and technology look as antiquated as the 1920s look to us now. We could be entering an age where serious diseases are cured and medicine can be personalized to repair even problems we were born with.
In short, AI is going to be incredibly powerful and anything that powerful comes with a risk of misuse by bad actors. But it also comes with an upside that we would be crazy to ignore in terms of improvement in human lives.
But the more this topic gets politicized, the dumber the conversation about it gets. Progressives, who supposedly are interested in human progress, have latched onto the anti-AI campaign for a few reasons.
First, it's popular. Opposition to new data centers is widespread and progressives are only too happy to latch onto a winning issue and side with NIMBYism if it can help them in the midterms.
Second, the people running the big AI companies are billionaires which lines up nicely with the economic populism that is also very popular. It's easy to demonize AI when Elon Musk is one of the people behind it.
Third, President Trump has been broadly supportive of the growth of these companies and the data centers that allow them to exist. He (rightly, I think), believes that this is a technological battle the US needs to win. But his involvement gives progressives one more reason to hate AI and, let's be honest, some of the far-left DSA types would probably be happier if China won this race anyway. The last thing they want to see is a more powerful America.
Fourth, AI doomerism fits neatly with the climate doomerism they've been preaching for decades. You know the beats of this story. The world is falling apart before our eyes. The problems are nearly insurmountable. We're going to be responsible for our own destruction unless we act immediately to give Democrats more power to save us from ourselves. Am I talking about AI extinction or climate change? Does it even matter? The narrative works either way.
Fifth, maybe it's the years of this kind of doomsaying but many have noticed that there is a certain amount of depression chic in left-wing circles. If you aren't a gloomy pessimist about capitalism, democracy, the environment, racial reckoning, etc. then you probably don't care enough about the world. Evidence that things have improved in the world is inconvenient and doesn't really change the vibe on the left. And the vibe is always this: It's all going to hell as we watch and you aren't engaged enough in stopping it.
There's a pretty good example of this last point in today's NY Times. Eco-leftist Bill McKibben has an opinion piece adding AI to the number of things that progressives have to feel overwhelmed and depressed about.
The climate crisis now consists of walls of water sweeping down Nepali rivers, obliterating entire towns in the blink of an eye, and wildfires that wipe out California neighborhoods in hours. And we’re confronting the birth and Bunyanesque growth of a new technology, artificial intelligence, that, according to some of its creators, is fairly likely to kill us all in the near future. We have to sit and listen as men worth unfathomable sums speculate about whether our species will survive their companies’ initial public offerings.
We definitely weren’t designed to cope with all this — our bodies, our nervous systems, our brains. Among all the other dangers these developments represent, they’re simply wearing us out. A lot of us would like politicians to offer, alongside their promises of affordability, even a glimpse of serenity.
So if you feel down and...Liberal, that's how you should feel. That's how we should all feel. That's his pitch. If you ever wanted a clear peek into the mind of a Harvard-educated eco-progressive here it is.
A kind of overwhelming weariness and even sadness is increasingly the default state of what, in living memory, were optimistic, get-up-and-go-ish fellow Americans. I think if we had some way of surveying Americans at 3 a.m., we’d find huge numbers of people awake, wondering what new strain might be in store come morning. I don’t think it’s fragility at work — how are we supposed to respond to the now almost daily news that roving bands of A.I. agents are up to mayhem, or that the onrushing El Niño will take temperatures to heights no human has ever experienced?
In case you think my comparison between the eco-narrative and the AI-narrative was a stretch, here's the guy who ran the campaign against the Keystone XL pipeline to set you straight.
I arrive at this point with an unfair advantage, having spent the past four decades facing down the steady and so far implacable rise in the planet’s temperature. Over the years I’ve worked out remedies that keep me mentally healthy enough to keep fighting. I’ve helped build big movements in no small part so that I’ll have others to lean on, and I’ve learned that I need an hour or two of exercising in the natural world most days to reset my soul.
The exercise is good advice. Exercise has been shown to ease symptoms of anxiety in depression. Now if only they had a leader to tell them everything will be okay.
We’ve traditionally thought of the president as a kind of national father figure. It helped a Depression-haunted nation when Franklin D. Roosevelt told us the only thing we had to fear was fear itself (and then backed it up with wave after wave of programs designed to make it so).
President Trump’s main response to our A.I. fear is to rename it “superintelligence”...
That's the windup and here's the ask. Vote Democrat, kids!
I hope we won’t choose quietism or escape. I’m hard at work volunteering in this fall’s midterm elections, for instance; we simply can’t tune out.
If we elect serious leaders who can take control of Congress and the presidency, they’ll have to work hard — we need all kinds of reforms to prevent a relapse of the sickness to which we’ve fallen prey...
I’d be happy to listen to Jon Ossoff or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for half an hour every Thursday if either of them runs for and is elected president. And then I’d be happy to think about something else that weekend; civic participation should be a part of life, not something that keeps you up at night.
The idea that this eco-maniac ever stops thinking about his next rally or is next campaign is a bit hard to believe. Maybe he did feel more relaxed when Biden was in office but a lot of us didn't. Try giving the most difficult job in the world to an old man who can't remember people he's known for 20 years and watching him run again for office while the actual White House is being run by a self-appointed "Politburo" of aides. Talk about stressful!
Anyway, McKibben knows his audience. Here's the #2 comment.
It's almost impossible to live in America today and not be adversely affected by something the Trump Administration is doing. If you aren't feeling those effects then you are probably not paying attention. Unfortunately, many of our undereducated electorate are doing just that - not paying attention, not reading up on policy decisions, not following the details...or the money. Some people just don't care and don't see politics as anything they need to be involved in or pay attention to. That's partially why we are in this situation we find ourselves in today. Many people just vote a certain way because that's the way they've always voted...that's the way their neighbors vote. But are they paying attention?
The reason many of us, who are paying attention, feel so exhausted is because this is the first Administration in American history whose sole purpose is for destruction, to break down, to dismantle, to roll back environmental protections, science & medical programs at all levels, and to rule as if they were a King...with no regards to the rule of law.
And for the most part, they are getting away with it.
Dealing with at least 2+ more years of this is going to be hard.
If you're not depressed and anxious, you're not paying attention. That's their heartfelt belief. It doesn't seem to occur to them that government by and for anxious, depressed people waiting for something to kill us all may not be the best we can do for the country. AI is just the latest verse in the same old song.
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