What the AI debate is really about

Beyond doomers and optimists

I’ve been thinking, reading, and talking to people about artificial intelligence for the past few months, without writing about it, and I’m increasingly frustrated by the tendency to pit “doomers” against AI “optimists.”

Outside of a handful of internet personalities, relatively few of the people raising safety concerns about AI development are actually saying humanity is doomed. A completely unregulated electricity generation market would be a huge mess, causing unacceptable levels of pollution and death, but we don’t label those who call for utilities regulation “electricity doomers.” Powerful technologies with massive upside often also have significant downside, with the power to doom us if, and only if, we plow ahead in a totally heedless way. The argument is that we shouldn’t do that.

And on the other side, most of the people in the non-doom camp aren’t really optimists deep down. There may be a handful of true accelerationists who sincerely yearn to bring about humanity’s suppression by silicon-based intelligences. But it seems to me that the vast majority of anti-doomers are actually much more skeptical of AI. Some are really hard skeptics who think we’re in an “AI bubble” that’s about to burst and that all of this may never amount to anything. But many of those who are more optimistic are still soft AI skeptics. They fundamentally agree with the bubble-callers and tech industry haters that this is just the latest thing in the Silicon Valley hype cycle. They’re just more optimistically disposed to the hype cycle.

This camp (I’ll call them normalizers) encompasses a range of more specific opinions about artificial intelligence. But they’re the same sort of opinions people tend to hold about everything else in the tech world. Some are deeply worried about algorithmic bias and racism. Others are excited about making a ton of money in innovative startups or concerned about antitrust and consolidations. Still others think that pessimistic anti-tech vibes hold us back as a society. Some think the media is too credulous about founders and VCs, while some think the media is absurdly biased against founders and VCs.

But these are the same arguments we have about crypto, about the metaverse, about mobile, about social media, and everything else. Because most optimists are not, fundamentally, AI optimists — they are superintelligence skeptics.

The specter of superintelligence

Vladimir Putin says that “artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind” and that “whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”