More "Knowledge Age" than "Creation Age". AI can distill information into knowledge, which is new and unique. But it does not create anything truly new, just rearranges and summarizes the existing in ways which are complex and novel enough to be "indistinguishable from magic" for now to our 2022 brains, but will seem laughably obvious to our future selves (like the CGI effects in films from the early 90s that seemed so real at the time).
Sturgeon's Law that "ninety percent of everything is crap" holds true - AI just enables the creation of crap at vast scales.
Ray Kurzweil's "Age of Spiritual Machines" (1999) is a great speculative read that plots out the exponential growth path that technology has progressed down throughout human history and appears to be continuing along. His ideas that uneven distribution of tech will widen intellectual and economic inequality, and that in a way all Internet/smartphone users are "cyborgs" now (and have been for a while) are powerful. His ideas about what will happen when machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence by exponents are terrifying.
Art and culture will swing back towards valuing the clearly human-made in a way that it has swung between organic and machine-made fashions throughout the modern era (art nouveau -> machine age/bauhaus -> arts and crafts -> space-age mod -> organic modernism -> industrial minimalism etc etc), as being able to have human-made things will become a marker of status as machine-made ones approach zero cost.
AI will be an unevenly distributed technology that will revolutionize life for the global top 5% (if you are reading this, that is you). It will have unseen and mostly negative changes for most in modern societies (think ever more marginal gig-work jobs being scheduled and productivity heavily monitored by AI, or being denied insurance because the AI identifies them as a risk). All this while 62% of the world lives on less than $10/day and 35% of the world is still entirely offline, neither group noticing or caring about AI in the slightest.
Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock" (1970) and Kurzweil's predictions of a "New Luddite" movement become ever more relevant as we see humans that live in ostensibly modern societies but are highly resistant to change start to break down mentally from the onslaught of future, threatening social stability (see: studies on social media's impact on teenage mental health, Jan 6, any YouTube comment section).
If this is a new era, it will be one of instability and uncertainty for most and a concentration of intellectual and economic wealth for an even-fewer. But that seems like a continuation of the now, so could it even be considered a new era?
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We are already in the knowledge age, in fact the irony of calling this new era a "knowledge age" is probably the opposite of what will be true; AI will lessen knowledge as people become more reliant on machines to think and do things for them.
Also the argument that AI does not create anything new is an interesting point. I would argue that 99.9% of humans never produce anything "new". We use prior knowledge (prior computation) in order to create something. The old adage "there is nothing new under the sun" tends to ring true more often than not. Does that mean that AI is not producing unique things? (queue a 12 hour debate we could have on what constitutes "new"! 🤣💗)
I agree with several points though: AI allows for the creation of crap at scale...this will be a problem we need to address somehow as we already have an overwhelming amount of garbage to sift through to find value.
I also agree on the top 5% gaining the most from AI, we will be the ones utilising AI to our benefit, while the bottom 95% will be a victim of the decisions and output difference that AI introduces.
In particular you mention that "neither group noticing or caring about AI in the slightest.", this is the most worrying part. They may not notice and or care about it...but it will (and already is) affecting their life and the world they live in (although I am sure I do not need to say that and that was the point you were making, it just jumped out at me!).
But...BUT there is one important thing to note, while the inequality may increase as a relative metric, each new era has tended to yield an absolute increase in the standard of living across the globe.
So while the difference between the "haves" and the "have nots" will increase, I certainly believe that this next era will allow for more people to be lifted from absolute poverty at least. (But time will tell if I am right there and it may just be false optimism).
I love the points you have made, I also appreciate the inclusion of some books to add to my reading list as they sound interesting! 🙏💗
I can only imagine what gems you will share on my next article, which is a summary of the first chapter of "The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI".
Oh and finally "welcome to Dev.to", I notice your account is new and this is your first comment, I cannot wait to see what other thoughts you share going forward! 💗
Agreed. The biggest problem I see here is what we define as "progress". The focus is too much that new technology - that is available to a minority - equates to progress. There's not enough consideration of other forms of measurable progress; where you could argue we are going backwards. Social equality; war; the environment; health... In these realms things aren't looking so bright and these shiny new toys achieve nothing useful to solve them.
And even the previous ages quoted haven't been entirely positive steps. The industrial revolution brought pollution on a massive scale. Farming technologies and practices are now so "effective" we can strip out forests and topsoil at a terrifying rate without any regard for the long term consequences. The internet - which was supposed to make information available to everyone - now makes misinformation available to everyone...
This might be a new age - though TBH so far all I've seen is smoke and mirrors - but I don't see it as a positive step. We should focus our intelligence and resources on solving global problems; rather than inventing machines that mass produce content that we don't have the time to consume and with minimal quality control. The internet and social media already delivered that in spades 😅
Accessibility Specialist. I focus on ensuring content created, events held and company assets are as accessible as possible, for as many people as possible.
It is so difficult, the gap between the top and the bottom is widening relative to each other. But in terms of absolutes, the whole world is improving, there are fewer people in absolute poverty, the are more opportunities today for people than there were.
I say this because the way we shape laws, social interactions and uses of AI is going to have a huge impact on whether that gap widens by a large amount or a small amount (make no mistake that gap will inevitably widen though...that is just a result of capitalism and globalisation and the fact that a few are able to monopolise markets with technology and the cost of transportation and international logistics continually reducing.
As for nothing being entirely positive, that is something that I agree with, but that is the lack of foresight and different morals and priorities across humanity, greed etc. It is not something that the technology itself is responsible for. This is why AI is, to me, so damned exciting and terrifying at the same time. This time our mistakes will be amplified even more!
So while you might see smokes and mirrors, I see the same thing I saw 20+ years ago.
I see the first sparks of something that will change society, I see the first "e-commerce" website that operates across borders, but this time it is an AI that is "good enough" to start imposing the views of a small few on what is "biased" and "correct" onto the world, that is able to increase "mid level" output to unbelievable levels etc. etc.
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More "Knowledge Age" than "Creation Age". AI can distill information into knowledge, which is new and unique. But it does not create anything truly new, just rearranges and summarizes the existing in ways which are complex and novel enough to be "indistinguishable from magic" for now to our 2022 brains, but will seem laughably obvious to our future selves (like the CGI effects in films from the early 90s that seemed so real at the time).
Sturgeon's Law that "ninety percent of everything is crap" holds true - AI just enables the creation of crap at vast scales.
Ray Kurzweil's "Age of Spiritual Machines" (1999) is a great speculative read that plots out the exponential growth path that technology has progressed down throughout human history and appears to be continuing along. His ideas that uneven distribution of tech will widen intellectual and economic inequality, and that in a way all Internet/smartphone users are "cyborgs" now (and have been for a while) are powerful. His ideas about what will happen when machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence by exponents are terrifying.
Art and culture will swing back towards valuing the clearly human-made in a way that it has swung between organic and machine-made fashions throughout the modern era (art nouveau -> machine age/bauhaus -> arts and crafts -> space-age mod -> organic modernism -> industrial minimalism etc etc), as being able to have human-made things will become a marker of status as machine-made ones approach zero cost.
AI will be an unevenly distributed technology that will revolutionize life for the global top 5% (if you are reading this, that is you). It will have unseen and mostly negative changes for most in modern societies (think ever more marginal gig-work jobs being scheduled and productivity heavily monitored by AI, or being denied insurance because the AI identifies them as a risk). All this while 62% of the world lives on less than $10/day and 35% of the world is still entirely offline, neither group noticing or caring about AI in the slightest.
Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock" (1970) and Kurzweil's predictions of a "New Luddite" movement become ever more relevant as we see humans that live in ostensibly modern societies but are highly resistant to change start to break down mentally from the onslaught of future, threatening social stability (see: studies on social media's impact on teenage mental health, Jan 6, any YouTube comment section).
If this is a new era, it will be one of instability and uncertainty for most and a concentration of intellectual and economic wealth for an even-fewer. But that seems like a continuation of the now, so could it even be considered a new era?
We are already in the knowledge age, in fact the irony of calling this new era a "knowledge age" is probably the opposite of what will be true; AI will lessen knowledge as people become more reliant on machines to think and do things for them.
Also the argument that AI does not create anything new is an interesting point. I would argue that 99.9% of humans never produce anything "new". We use prior knowledge (prior computation) in order to create something. The old adage "there is nothing new under the sun" tends to ring true more often than not. Does that mean that AI is not producing unique things? (queue a 12 hour debate we could have on what constitutes "new"! 🤣💗)
I agree with several points though: AI allows for the creation of crap at scale...this will be a problem we need to address somehow as we already have an overwhelming amount of garbage to sift through to find value.
I also agree on the top 5% gaining the most from AI, we will be the ones utilising AI to our benefit, while the bottom 95% will be a victim of the decisions and output difference that AI introduces.
In particular you mention that "neither group noticing or caring about AI in the slightest.", this is the most worrying part. They may not notice and or care about it...but it will (and already is) affecting their life and the world they live in (although I am sure I do not need to say that and that was the point you were making, it just jumped out at me!).
But...BUT there is one important thing to note, while the inequality may increase as a relative metric, each new era has tended to yield an absolute increase in the standard of living across the globe.
So while the difference between the "haves" and the "have nots" will increase, I certainly believe that this next era will allow for more people to be lifted from absolute poverty at least. (But time will tell if I am right there and it may just be false optimism).
I love the points you have made, I also appreciate the inclusion of some books to add to my reading list as they sound interesting! 🙏💗
I can only imagine what gems you will share on my next article, which is a summary of the first chapter of "The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI".
Here is a rough draft if you want a sneak peek: docs.google.com/document/d/1oKuLBF...
Oh and finally "welcome to Dev.to", I notice your account is new and this is your first comment, I cannot wait to see what other thoughts you share going forward! 💗
Agreed. The biggest problem I see here is what we define as "progress". The focus is too much that new technology - that is available to a minority - equates to progress. There's not enough consideration of other forms of measurable progress; where you could argue we are going backwards. Social equality; war; the environment; health... In these realms things aren't looking so bright and these shiny new toys achieve nothing useful to solve them.
And even the previous ages quoted haven't been entirely positive steps. The industrial revolution brought pollution on a massive scale. Farming technologies and practices are now so "effective" we can strip out forests and topsoil at a terrifying rate without any regard for the long term consequences. The internet - which was supposed to make information available to everyone - now makes misinformation available to everyone...
This might be a new age - though TBH so far all I've seen is smoke and mirrors - but I don't see it as a positive step. We should focus our intelligence and resources on solving global problems; rather than inventing machines that mass produce content that we don't have the time to consume and with minimal quality control. The internet and social media already delivered that in spades 😅
It is so difficult, the gap between the top and the bottom is widening relative to each other. But in terms of absolutes, the whole world is improving, there are fewer people in absolute poverty, the are more opportunities today for people than there were.
I say this because the way we shape laws, social interactions and uses of AI is going to have a huge impact on whether that gap widens by a large amount or a small amount (make no mistake that gap will inevitably widen though...that is just a result of capitalism and globalisation and the fact that a few are able to monopolise markets with technology and the cost of transportation and international logistics continually reducing.
As for nothing being entirely positive, that is something that I agree with, but that is the lack of foresight and different morals and priorities across humanity, greed etc. It is not something that the technology itself is responsible for. This is why AI is, to me, so damned exciting and terrifying at the same time. This time our mistakes will be amplified even more!
So while you might see smokes and mirrors, I see the same thing I saw 20+ years ago.
I see the first sparks of something that will change society, I see the first "e-commerce" website that operates across borders, but this time it is an AI that is "good enough" to start imposing the views of a small few on what is "biased" and "correct" onto the world, that is able to increase "mid level" output to unbelievable levels etc. etc.