A profound insight for me from "Power and Progress" by Acemoglu and Johnson was that it is never a given that technological progress will benefit humanity. It is always a social choice, dependent on the institutions in the society. A lot of technological progress happened in medieval times as well, for no benefit to humanity at all. Whether AI benefits us or not will be a choice. Let's see what choice we make.
True though: AI just like all other technologies in the past is very much a neutral medium. It can be used to brutishly make a case in a board room meeting to fire an entire support staff department. It can also be used some well-meaning independent researcher looking to run solo and grab intel and opportunities at an efficiency like never before.
It's a 10x leverage; multiply it with a positive force, it returns positive. Multiply it with something negative and negative gets thrown out of the other side. If you think the AI will do all the work for you, you're setting yourself up for disappointment: 10 x 0 is still 0.
A profound insight for me from "Power and Progress" by Acemoglu and Johnson was that it is never a given that technological progress will benefit humanity. It is always a social choice, dependent on the institutions in the society. A lot of technological progress happened in medieval times as well, for no benefit to humanity at all. Whether AI benefits us or not will be a choice. Let's see what choice we make.
True though: AI just like all other technologies in the past is very much a neutral medium. It can be used to brutishly make a case in a board room meeting to fire an entire support staff department. It can also be used some well-meaning independent researcher looking to run solo and grab intel and opportunities at an efficiency like never before.
It's a 10x leverage; multiply it with a positive force, it returns positive. Multiply it with something negative and negative gets thrown out of the other side. If you think the AI will do all the work for you, you're setting yourself up for disappointment: 10 x 0 is still 0.