Lewis Mumford is a new name to me, but this overview does a very interesting job placing his work and ideas in the context of modern society. Specifically, society's relationship with technology.
The most striking evidence of the myth’s cultural pervasiveness is that many avid accelerationists do not deny that AI could mean the end of humanity. They merely differ from the doomers in believing that this risk is necessary—even desirable—to achieve the spectacular increases in efficiency and productivity promised by AGI. Mumford foresaw this extreme endpoint. “The myth of the machine,” he wrote, “the basic religion of our present culture, has so captured the modern mind that no human sacrifice seems too great provided it is offered up to the insolent Marduks and Molochs of science and technology.”
Those branded as skeptics or doomers also still accept the premises of the myth of the machine. The stated aim of many organizations concerned with avoiding the worst AI outcomes is that we should “realize the benefits while mitigating the risks” of the technology. Mumford would argue the first half of this statement concedes too much, accepting the basic premise of the myth of the machine while presenting the task as removing the obstacles to realize its benefits. Many skeptics also share a basic misanthropic premise of machine superiority, focusing as they do on the biased, irrational, and flawed nature of human beings that needs machinic augmentation.
This is it, of course. There's a new generation of business tycoon. Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Alex Karp are representative. While he has a nicer demeanor, Dario Amodei probably fits here too. While they are government contractors and, to a lesser degree, producers of goods for the consumer market, they're not satisfied with being seen as the widget makers they are. So they've taken it upon themselves to redefine the role of humanity. And of course that role is subservient to their machine god.
Sixty-odd years ago, on The Jetsons, mundane sitcom suburbanites were depicted as living in splendor above the skies. A homey kind of splendor, to be sure. They had a robot maid, but she sounded just like Hazel. Now, in order to get that level of futuristic ease, we're expected to submit to robots we're not allowed to question. Have they done a good enough job at changing and replacing the audience that people will take this deal. Some probably will. Time will tell how many.
1 comment:
That anyone would dare to call LLMs AI is an incredible conceit. I did enjoy the article that focused on Lewis Mumford's thoughts about progress when it was still in its early stages shows clearly his partiality to humanism vs utilitarianism. As stated in the essay you linked to, transvaluation was making humans more machine-like. Machine values overtake what he calls 'life values'.
https://academicweb.nd.edu/~ehalton/mumfordbio.html
I thought of Richard Brautigan's 'Machines of Loving Grace' remembered from the 60s:
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
and wondered again is this meant to be ironic? Or could it be that deep down he's hoping for the perfect ending of our society as it is - rather like one of Iain M. Banks Minds, 'Maybe it wasn’t anything remotely to do with religion, mysticism or metaphilosophy after all; maybe it was more banal; maybe it was just...accounting.' One is best advised to be suspicious.
I don't believe the current version of what the Silicon Valley gang is calling AI has anything to do with intelligence and it's very likely to fail altogether in the next year or two. It's already losing money and people are already up in arms about the water and electricity wasted. Remember that Luddites were the good guys; they were against technology that would be used to exploit them.
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