Ready for more technology in your daily life? Me neither. But business tycoons have other plans.
The rise of images created by artificial intelligence has created existential risks for photography as we know it. (Eric Thomas for Kansas Reflector)
Assuming our world refrains from descending into a fascist hellscape, let’s all imagine our lives in 10 years’ time.
Will our lives include an ever-greater role for social media and other invasive technologies brought to you by gargantuan corporations? Or will they be simpler lives, based on face-to-face interactions and genuine experiences in the real world?
What’s funny about asking that question is that so few people desire a life with more technology. I asked the question on social media, and folks overwhelmingly chose the second option. No one likes the onrush of artificial intelligent programs ceaselessly manufacturing false information. No one likes the psychological stresses created by ever-mutating social media platforms. And while we live in thrall to online merchants such as Amazon, many of us would gladly favor local merchants — if they existed.
So why is it that business elites have decided that question for us? Why do their business plans, and the forecasts of everyone involved in the world economy assume an ever-greater role for technology? One assumes that profit provides the answer, but that only makes sense if customers keep buying.
I don’t think it was always this way.
I well remember the excitement of the mid-1990s, when anyone following technology understood that the Internet would revolutionize our world. These computer network connections allowed unparalleled access to news and information. Movies, music and literature once locked away in dusty archives could now be seen and heard and read by anyone with a computer and modem.
At a certain point, however, technological progress became less about making our daily lives more convenient or about bringing the world of ideas to us. Instead, it focused on selling us experiences we don’t want and merchandise we don’t need.
As technology companies became the dominant movers in our country’s economy — in the world’s economy — they became beholden to the the same kind of short-term financial shenanigans that define our late-stage capitalistic society. They need to generate profit, profit, profit, no matter the effect on overall societal well-being. In the space of less than a generation, tech companies have morphed from benign online bookstores to noisome tobacco manufacturers. With all of the conscience-destroying dishonesty inherent in that comparison.
Last month, I wrote about how the large language model ChatGPT was generating fake information about my last name. Since then, I’ve heard directly from readers who have experienced similar AI hallucinations. Social media and news reports suggest that students have started using this technology in their schoolwork.
In other words, we have switched from technology making us smarter and better informed to dumber and worse informed.
Such progress!
Meanwhile, the Lawrence school board has renewed its contract with Gaggle, an AI program that scours student devices for supposedly troubling information. Laurence High School journalists reported how the supposedly sophisticated software program flagged a variety of innocuous behavior for school administrators. School officials praised the efforts of the students and said they would take their concerns into account for the future.
We can now see that Lawrence school officials have been seduced by impossible promises of gimmicky technology. You cannot hand off the work of building relationships with students and their families to a software program and skip away with an unencumbered conscience. You just can’t.
Underlying this all is the concern voiced by tech writer Cory Doctorow. He coined the term ens***tifcation to describe the process whereby a useful website or piece of technology gains an enormous audience thanks to its simplicity and quality, then is methodically degraded by its owners to sell advertising and exploit users.
This process, he wrote, could be seen on popular platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and many others. I would suggest that ens***tifcation applies much more broadly in the technological field. Wonderful and useful devices are introduced and gradually become worse.
How many people can truly tell the difference between their high-definition TV set and a 4K definition TV set? How many can tell the difference between an iPhone 12 and an iPhone 14? How many can tell the difference between a Kindle seventh generation and a Kindle ninth generation? If you play games, how different is a PlayStation 4 exclusive from a PlayStation 5 one? Please, don’t all answer at once.
Enthusiasts will list an array of differences between all of these products. But when it comes to the vast majority of people, technology companies have decided to sell their customers the same item over and over. Meanwhile, social media companies addict you to online content that either numbs your mind or radicalizes users into right-wing fascism or left-wing inanity.
I understand. I’m a rapidly aging grump. In 10 years, I may look as ridiculous as the man who supposedly said “everything that can be invented has been invented” in 1899. For the good of society, I hope that’s the case.
Perhaps then we should listen to the predictions of a futurist. That is, let’s listen to someone who doesn’t have to meet quarterly sales deadlines and instead thanks about the future in broad strokes. Nobody could be better-suited for the job than Ray Kurzweil, an artificial intelligence expert and futurist.
He has just published a new book, “The Singularity Is Nearer,” making an astonishing array of claims about the future.
“The Singularity, which is a metaphor borrowed from physics, will occur when we merge our brain with the cloud,” Kurzweil told the Guardian. “We’re going to be a combination of our natural intelligence and our cybernetic intelligence and it’s all going to be rolled into one. Making it possible will be brain-computer interfaces which ultimately will be nanobots — robots the size of molecules — that will go noninvasively into our brains through the capillaries. We are going to expand intelligence a millionfold by 2045 and it is going to deepen our awareness and consciousness.”
He acknowledged, after the interviewer pushed back, that this all sounds absolutely awful: “People do say ‘I don’t want that.’ They thought they didn’t want phones either!”
Lord have mercy on us all.
Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
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