3 ms·
I think this perception of arrogance is often a misunderstanding. The stuff that Silicon Valley makes is often treated like brilliant children. Especially when
by ewzimm 11y ago
I think this perception of arrogance is often a misunderstanding. The stuff that Silicon Valley makes is often treated like brilliant children. Especially when we are talking about creating automated systems, the pride is the same as a parent training a child to go out and do great things. They don't take full credit for it. They just laid the groundwork for that child to go out and become an amazing person.
In the same way, people working on things like AI are looking at the limitless potential, not necessarily as their own achievement, but as helping to nurture something which will eventually develop on its own, but in ways that are currently unimaginable by people.
This might look arrogant to other people, but it's more like humility in reality, a realization of what our limitations as people are and an understanding about how we might be able to build intelligent systems that can surpass these. They might not all be Artificial General Intelligences. They will often be good at very specific things, like AlphaGo, but they will be able to make leaps of intuition that we know no human could accomplish.
I think that most people's problem with pride isn't that someone else is feeling good about themselves but rather that it humiliates the person seeing it. We're going to have to learn a lot of humility as a species if we are ever going to overcome our limitations.
- thelock85 11y ago> a realization of what our limitations as people are and an understanding about how we might be able to build intelligent systems that can surpass these. I wish it was this way but in my experience, technologists are creating great/novel technology for the sake being able to create great/novel technology, instead of thoughtfully designing systems that consider consequences beyond a high-growth business model (if any). I agree it's not arrogance but also it's hard to pass of as humility; rather, it seems to be a limitation of wisdom which is hardly unique to SV.
- ewzimm 11y agoI do think there are plenty of people who just enjoy creating things, but I've heard and read plenty of thoughtful consideration of the consequences too. The problem is that it's almost impossible to predict the full consequences of transforming society to the extent that the progress of technology does. We can only try things in limited settings and see how they work. The idea of the basic income is to give us more room to experiment without having to worry about the financial viability of each experiment. It certainly doesn't mean those experiments aren't worthwhile or useful, just that sometimes what makes money isn't the same as what needs to be done.