Dealing with A.I.nxiety
“Our personal experience is going to mean nothing,” the Doctor said. It was a gloomy confession. Almost a surrender. We were discussing the news that Open.AI’s Chat GPT has recently aced the US Medical Licensing Exam, and nailed the diagnostic of a rare disease. From a patient standpoint, he was excited, but for the first time in his life, he contemplated retiring.
On the same weekend, while the kids engaged in one more egg hunt, the adults discussed the tech leaders’ letter to decelerate the development of new AI language models, and the geopolitical implications of the US’ “wait and see” approach to regulating Tech’s approach to AI, versus Europe’s more likely driven effort to control it.
It’s all around us. The discussions. The apprehension. The decisions we may soon be forced to make, on a personal or political level, all seem overwhelming.
Consequential is a word I’ve been hearing a lot. And not only among specialists in AI or leaders in their industries. The conversation is becoming increasingly mainstream.
A threat to humanity?
Geoffrey Hinton, considered by many to be the Godfather of AI, was recently interviewed on Saturday Morning at CBS. When asked about the danger of a recursively self-improving learning machine, and if he regretted being related to such a threat to humanity, he said he did regret to some point, but he thinks this is one of those unavoidable events that if one person didn’t do it, someone else would.
These may be inevitable times indeed. But they aren’t completely unknown.
As a novelist, this entire moment strikes me as oddly prophetic, even if realities are slightly different from the fictional predictions — e.g. the popularity of artificial creativity as opposed to mechanical tasks. As a former computer programmer and a marketing executive with 30 years dealing with the interchanges between tech and culture, it feels like something I have seen before—in a totally different dimension, but yet familiar enough to allow me to bring some useful perspective.
A mental hack against AInxiety
Having been born and raised in Rio, I like to see large technological shifts as giant waves coming in our direction. You can either run for the mountains or you can grab a board and try to surf them. With Artificial Intelligence, it’s not different. Standing in front of the sea shouting that it’s evil is futile. You're going to be swept. Because the wave is coming, regardless of if some want to pause or accelerate it, or if the sight of the approaching water makes you feel excitement, joy or anxiety.
And that’s part of the problem. On some level, everyone experiences all these conflicting emotions all at once, making it hard to manage its viscerality and come to any conclusion, opinion or a decision between the escape or the surfing plans.
But maybe this can help, a little model I created for myself that separates the implication of this wave on our lives. An over-simplification, I admit, but one that allows us to deal with our conflicting emotions and act accordingly, even if in equally conflicting directions.
This model organizes the impact of this new technology in four different levels: individual, company, society and humanity, each one with its own challenges, discussions and opportunities. And most of all, allows you to decide if you want to run for the mountains or surf the wave on each one separately, as if they were four different waves.
On the individual level, the arrival of AI will change every profession. It will force people to learn new skills and new ways of doing things, but it will also allow us to do way more than we currently can. If you can’t wait to be able to amplify your ability to do things, grab your board. If you are too tired to learn your thing again, run to the mountains.
As companies, running for the mountains means closing or merging with other operations that can use some of your assets in the new competitive landscape; surfing means rolling up your sleeves right now and starting to consider what will change once machines that learn become part of your operation. Because they will.
From a society standpoint, or the market, the conversations are more complex. There is the impact on jobs and the livelihood of millions. There are ethical and legal debates that take time and somehow need to be accelerated, because the idea of asking the wave to pause until we figure it out seems a bit naive. Yet, we can start plans on how to help people on the great job shift that may happen (surf) or try to use our legal systems and political pressure to control and keep these forces away (mountain). Though other countries and communities will still embrace it and that may become a big competitive problem.
Finally, as the human race, we need to consider the possible outcomes of a “species” smarter than us. It may happen, and it may be too late to control it. Maybe the real conversation we should have here isn’t on yes or no, surf or mountain, but how can we coexist in harmony, and even abandon this idea that we will forever be the smartest creatures on Earth. Yes, that may be going a bit too far into sci-fi worlds, but it may be the time to discuss it, not from the point of view of old stories, but inspired by the new realities.
Control is an illusion, but a nice one
This is basically a stoic way of looking at things from the perspective of what we can and cannot control. As any simplification of reality though, the model is obviously flawed. There aren’t four different waves (individual, company, society and humanity). There is one wave, it is coming and we don’t know the levels of violence and wonder it will have on each of those parts of our lives. And on the higher levels, there are things we can do beyond running or surfing — we can regulate, control and resist. But from a strictly personal point, and the pressures we face to decide how we’ll face this future, if you separate the levels, you will be able to work on your plans, instead of just standing on the shore as its shadow quickly grows onto the shoreline.
