Month: October 2023

THE COMING HUMANIST RENAISSANCE

THE COMING HUMANIST RENAISSANCE

We need a cultural and philosophical movement to meet the rise of artificial superintelligence.

By Adrienne LaFrance

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/07/generative-ai-human-culture-philosophy/674165/

Just as the Industrial Revolution sparked transcendentalism in the U.S. and romanticism in Europe—both movements that challenged conformity and prioritized truth, nature, and individualism—today we need a cultural and philosophical revolution of our own. This new movement should prioritize humans above machines and reimagine human relationships with nature and with technology, while still advancing what this technology can do at its best. Artificial intelligence will, unquestionably, help us make miraculous, lifesaving discoveries. The danger lies in outsourcing our humanity to this technology without discipline, especially as it eclipses us in apperception. We need a human renaissance in the age of intelligent machines.

In the face of world-altering invention, with the power of today’s tech barons so concentrated, it can seem as though ordinary people have no hope of influencing the machines that will soon be cognitively superior to us all. But there is tremendous power in defining ideals, even if they ultimately remain out of reach. Considering all that is at stake, we have to at least try.

**** Google’s New Search Tool Could Eat the Internet Alive

If widely implemented, the peril of AI search is that it could eventually shrivel up much of the content that is now reliant on Google traffic for survival. Nothing is going to happen to the internet overnight, but websites hire people like me to notice and solve problems for readers because helpful information gets clicks. If publications aren’t rewarded with traffic, they are going to publish less information. Google claims it understands the stakes, though the company is notoriously secretive about how its algorithms work: The spokesperson told me the company will “continue to prioritize approaches that send valuable traffic to a wide range of creators and support a healthy, open web.” But the basic premise of a searchbot necessarily involves more text in Google, and less traffic to websites. Google’s AI doom loop may lead us into a much smaller version of the internet, with fewer sites, fewer posts—and thus a worse experience for all of us.

Read: AI search is a disaster