Published on June 11, 2025 3:40 AM GMT
Many people are worried about AI, envisioning a large range of ways itcould make the world worse. About twiceas many Americans think AI is likely to have a negative effect asa positive one. At a high level I agree: we're talking aboutcomputers that are smart in ways similar to people, and quicklygetting smarter. They're also faster and cheaper than people, andagain getting more so.
There are a lot of ways this couldgo, and many of them are seriously bad. I'm personally most worriedabout AI removing the technicalbarriers that keep regular people from creatingpandemics, removing human inefficiencies and moral objections thathave historicallymade totalitarian surveillance and control difficult to maintain,and gradually being put in control of critical systems withouteffective safeguards that keep them alignedwith our interests.
Despite these concerns, I'm temperamentally and culturally on the sideof better technology, building things, and being confident inhumanity's ability to adapt and to put new capabilities to beneficialuse. When I see people pushing back against rapid deployment of AI,it's often with objections I think are minor compared to the potentialbenefits. Common objections I find unconvincing include:
Energy and water: the impact is commonly massivelyoverstated, and we can build solar and desalination.
Reliability: people compare typical-case AI judgement tobest-case human judgement, ignoring that humans often operate wellbelow best-case performance.
Art: technological progress brought us to a world withmore artists than ever before, and I'd predict an increase inhuman-hours devoted to art as barriers continue to lower.
Tasks: it's overall great when we're able to automatesomething, freeing up humans to work elsewhere. In my own field, alarge fraction of what programmers were spending their time on in 1970has been automated. Now, at companies that draw heavily on AI it's themajority of whatprogrammers were doing just 3-5 years ago. The roleis shifting quickly to look a lot more like management.
I'm quite torn on how to respond when I see people making theseobjections. On one hand we agree on how we'd like to move a big "AI:faster or slower" lever, which puts us on the same side. Successfulpolitical movements generally require accepting compatriots with verydifferent values. On the other hand, reflexively emphasizing negative aspects ofchanges in ways that keep people from building has been really harmful(housing, nuclear power,GMOdeployment). This isn't an approach I feel good about supporting.
Other criticisms, however, are very reasonable. A few examples:
Employment: it's expensive to have employees, and companies arealways looking to cut costs. Initially I expect AI to increaseemployment, the same way the development of the railroad and truckingincreased demand for horses. In some areas humans (or horses) excel;in others AI (or mechanized transport) does. Over time, however, andpossibly pretty quickly, just as horses became economically marginalas their competition became cheaper and more capable, I expect thesame to happen to humans.
Scams: these have historically been limited by labor, both interms of costs and in terms of how many people would take the job. AIloosens both of these constraints dramatically.
Education: cheating in school is another thing that hashistorically been limited by cost and ethics. But when the AI can doyour homework better than you can, cheating is nearly inevitable.You'll be graded on a curve against classmates who are using the AI,your self-control is still developing, and teachers are mostly notadapting to the new reality. Learning suffers massively.
I'd love it if people thought hard about potential futures and where weshould go with AI, and took both existential (pandemicgeneration) and everyday (unemployment) risks seriously. I'm veryconflicted, though, on how much to push back on arguments where Iagree with the bottom line while disagreeing with the specifics. Fornow I'm continuing to object when I see arguments that seem wrong, butI'm going to try to put more thought into emphasizing the ways we doagree and not being too adversarial.
Comment via: substack
Discuss
