From the archives: In Silicon Valley in 2016, a group of A.I. whizzes and venture capitalists met to plot how to “replace all the writers." I was there
Wow, Anand, this is something. I think ThoughtLeader ought to have a small TM after it.
I worked as a journalist in Silly Cone Valley for many, many years and this is all so freaking familiar. In fact, I’m now almost 72 now, and my first freelance "journalism” job was to write the corporate backgrounder for a 22-person startup on Sand Hill Road called Oracle Corporation. I remember sitting in Larry Ellison’s office, looking into his shark-like, beady eyes. I recall listening to him expound upon the miracles of relational database management, and how it would upend all previous knowledge about the sorting of information.
The biggest, most lucrative customer of all these infant companies was and is, of course, the Military Industrial Complex.
Then, as a freelance journalist and one of maybe 3 women doing that in the Valley, I spent years listening to All the Young Dudes proudly beating their un-hairy little chests. I remember shaking hands with Gordon Moore, the crash of ’87 and the crash of the dot-com business, the end-of-the-world prophecies of Y2k (about which I wrote several articles), and the wonders being pitched at the Comdex trade show.
So here we are again, with AI eating up all these mens’ Frankensteinian brains, which expend their impressive energies on doing new things with technology without a care in the world about the outcome and effect on humanity. To them, it is all one big game: invent, invent, invent, grab the profits and run off to their private islands -- and fuck the rest of us.
So now I’m an old hippie living in Vermont, sighing and cynical and digging my garden, as Voltaire advised.
Thank you for this impressive piece of real writing.
My first instinct about AI was that it was being developed by imbalanced people -- primarily men. A lot of abstract ideas were being floated -- I assumed they were over my head. As time went on I became more intrigued by their disorienting speech. I'm pretty good at reading undertones.....but there didn't seem to be any. There was no connective tissue between the ideas. This was the imbalance I sensed, the disconnect. A great many words were swirling in a large vacuum of meaning. I think our brains now tell us to keep on clicking and clicking....because they can't tolerate, and refuse to accept a senseless existence. So.....that's my theory. I'm just trying to override the Curve here.....right?
Or it could simply be Enron-speak, where sophisticated-sounding words and phrases are used to obfuscate (excuse me, hide) the true meaning of what they're trying to communicate or more likely, the fact they have nothing to communicate at all. Verbal peacocking, if you will.
These people are terrifying. I will support only those politicians who unequivocally pledge to place government controls on AI and impose a wealth tax.
Great read! Unfortunately this "solution in search of a problem" has been around forever, especially in tech but also in other fields like pharmaceuticals. Decades ago, I worked for Quicken customer service. Every year, after the eagerly-anticipated new edition was released, we braced ourselves for the barrage of customer complaints, namely: "Instead of adding all these useless new features, why don't you fix the ________ bug that's been around for years?!"
Back then it was called "just-because-you-can-build-it-doesn't-mean-you-should." Pretty ironic considering the story I heard around the water cooler as to Quicken's origin: After the founder's wife watched him aimlessly coding at the kitchen table, she asked why doesn't he build something useful like a software program that can balance a checkbook. (This story differs from the official version, in which the founder was credited with the idea after observing his wife struggling with household bills. To me, the former version with the practical wife chastising her unfocused husband rings truer to me, but I wasn't there.)
Hear, hear! Moreover, when people stop drinking the kool-aid of consumption driven capitalism in pursuit of the shiniest new toy, perhaps the cycle will be interrupted.
Indeed we can see the consequences of meetings like the one you describe happening all around us. We, as a species, have some seriously large problems to solve that require cooperation to address, but so far, we are spending far more of our time saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you about that (pick your issue here, climate change, biodiversity loss, etc...), but have you seen this?" The "this" is the latest feature for one's cell phone or the new and improved gadget for your kitchen. I am simultaneously encouraged by the success of the recent Artemis II mission and dismayed at the reasons why we're doing it. We need to be able to solve big, existential problems or we won't even have the opportunity to enjoy the simple pleasures inherent in nature, or, if one must, the latest new gadget.
"About twenty students began to take their seats. Lots of jeans, lots of wrist activity trackers, lots of waifish legs crossed at the knee, lots of genius, lots of zealous and impatient male energy unleavened by social awareness or social grace. There was one woman in the room. Over the next ninety minutes, she would not speak."
Anand, this is why your new book title needs to be reconsidered. Cadence is nice, but it's not the be-all and end-all. Your human publishers and editors will be happy to work with you to come up with something better, something that does not reinforce the notion that humans are prototypically male. (As a production editor at a college textbook publisher in the early 70s, I worked on a book called Environment and Man; we would not see this title used today.)
Until the last few lines, the lyrics say "The man in the mirror." The definite article is clarifying. (As your piece suggests, the humanists have a lot going for them here.)
Same as it ever was — If we start with a brilliant enough solution, we don’t need to look for any reason to justify it. We can just look back afterwards and say anything that was changed or swept away was a problem we fixed.
I think of this quote/meme whenever AI comes up: "I want Al to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for Al to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.” – Joanna Maciejewska
Anand: Stumbled upon your trio-ness yesterday evening, you, your glowing-with-life wife, Priya, and the impressive humanist journalist, Jodi Kantor.
Yes, yes, yes!! Keep supercharging these sorts of conversations! Remind people, or let them discover for the FIRST time, where creative energy thrives. As history has taught and continues to teach, there will always be those like the semi-humans in that Stanford space ten years ago, whose intellectual breadth is finite, who can only function when framing the world as THEIR playground.
Maybe letting this piece loose will inspire your next book, but for now “Man in the Mirror” promises a feast.
Wow, Anand, this is something. I think ThoughtLeader ought to have a small TM after it.
I worked as a journalist in Silly Cone Valley for many, many years and this is all so freaking familiar. In fact, I’m now almost 72 now, and my first freelance "journalism” job was to write the corporate backgrounder for a 22-person startup on Sand Hill Road called Oracle Corporation. I remember sitting in Larry Ellison’s office, looking into his shark-like, beady eyes. I recall listening to him expound upon the miracles of relational database management, and how it would upend all previous knowledge about the sorting of information.
The biggest, most lucrative customer of all these infant companies was and is, of course, the Military Industrial Complex.
Then, as a freelance journalist and one of maybe 3 women doing that in the Valley, I spent years listening to All the Young Dudes proudly beating their un-hairy little chests. I remember shaking hands with Gordon Moore, the crash of ’87 and the crash of the dot-com business, the end-of-the-world prophecies of Y2k (about which I wrote several articles), and the wonders being pitched at the Comdex trade show.
So here we are again, with AI eating up all these mens’ Frankensteinian brains, which expend their impressive energies on doing new things with technology without a care in the world about the outcome and effect on humanity. To them, it is all one big game: invent, invent, invent, grab the profits and run off to their private islands -- and fuck the rest of us.
So now I’m an old hippie living in Vermont, sighing and cynical and digging my garden, as Voltaire advised.
Thank you for this impressive piece of real writing.
My first instinct about AI was that it was being developed by imbalanced people -- primarily men. A lot of abstract ideas were being floated -- I assumed they were over my head. As time went on I became more intrigued by their disorienting speech. I'm pretty good at reading undertones.....but there didn't seem to be any. There was no connective tissue between the ideas. This was the imbalance I sensed, the disconnect. A great many words were swirling in a large vacuum of meaning. I think our brains now tell us to keep on clicking and clicking....because they can't tolerate, and refuse to accept a senseless existence. So.....that's my theory. I'm just trying to override the Curve here.....right?
Or it could simply be Enron-speak, where sophisticated-sounding words and phrases are used to obfuscate (excuse me, hide) the true meaning of what they're trying to communicate or more likely, the fact they have nothing to communicate at all. Verbal peacocking, if you will.
These people are terrifying. I will support only those politicians who unequivocally pledge to place government controls on AI and impose a wealth tax.
Great read! Unfortunately this "solution in search of a problem" has been around forever, especially in tech but also in other fields like pharmaceuticals. Decades ago, I worked for Quicken customer service. Every year, after the eagerly-anticipated new edition was released, we braced ourselves for the barrage of customer complaints, namely: "Instead of adding all these useless new features, why don't you fix the ________ bug that's been around for years?!"
Back then it was called "just-because-you-can-build-it-doesn't-mean-you-should." Pretty ironic considering the story I heard around the water cooler as to Quicken's origin: After the founder's wife watched him aimlessly coding at the kitchen table, she asked why doesn't he build something useful like a software program that can balance a checkbook. (This story differs from the official version, in which the founder was credited with the idea after observing his wife struggling with household bills. To me, the former version with the practical wife chastising her unfocused husband rings truer to me, but I wasn't there.)
Hear, hear! Moreover, when people stop drinking the kool-aid of consumption driven capitalism in pursuit of the shiniest new toy, perhaps the cycle will be interrupted.
Indeed we can see the consequences of meetings like the one you describe happening all around us. We, as a species, have some seriously large problems to solve that require cooperation to address, but so far, we are spending far more of our time saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you about that (pick your issue here, climate change, biodiversity loss, etc...), but have you seen this?" The "this" is the latest feature for one's cell phone or the new and improved gadget for your kitchen. I am simultaneously encouraged by the success of the recent Artemis II mission and dismayed at the reasons why we're doing it. We need to be able to solve big, existential problems or we won't even have the opportunity to enjoy the simple pleasures inherent in nature, or, if one must, the latest new gadget.
"About twenty students began to take their seats. Lots of jeans, lots of wrist activity trackers, lots of waifish legs crossed at the knee, lots of genius, lots of zealous and impatient male energy unleavened by social awareness or social grace. There was one woman in the room. Over the next ninety minutes, she would not speak."
Anand, this is why your new book title needs to be reconsidered. Cadence is nice, but it's not the be-all and end-all. Your human publishers and editors will be happy to work with you to come up with something better, something that does not reinforce the notion that humans are prototypically male. (As a production editor at a college textbook publisher in the early 70s, I worked on a book called Environment and Man; we would not see this title used today.)
It's a Michael Jackson song relevant to the book?!
Until the last few lines, the lyrics say "The man in the mirror." The definite article is clarifying. (As your piece suggests, the humanists have a lot going for them here.)
Same as it ever was — If we start with a brilliant enough solution, we don’t need to look for any reason to justify it. We can just look back afterwards and say anything that was changed or swept away was a problem we fixed.
I think of this quote/meme whenever AI comes up: "I want Al to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for Al to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.” – Joanna Maciejewska
I guess Mary Shelly was on to something
Anand: Stumbled upon your trio-ness yesterday evening, you, your glowing-with-life wife, Priya, and the impressive humanist journalist, Jodi Kantor.
Yes, yes, yes!! Keep supercharging these sorts of conversations! Remind people, or let them discover for the FIRST time, where creative energy thrives. As history has taught and continues to teach, there will always be those like the semi-humans in that Stanford space ten years ago, whose intellectual breadth is finite, who can only function when framing the world as THEIR playground.
Maybe letting this piece loose will inspire your next book, but for now “Man in the Mirror” promises a feast.