Tech billionaires’ vision of an AI-dominated future is flawed — and dangerous
A new book unravels the fantasy of a limitless society in outer space served by superintelligent AI
A new book contends that Silicon Valley’s vision of the future — one in which AI enables humans to surpass biological limitations and build an ever-growing society in space — is implausible and morally fraught.
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More Everything Forever
Adam Becker
Basic Books, $32
In the eyes of tech billionaires, our future is clear. We will be an ever-growing society living in outer space, our every need answered by superintelligent AIs. This vision may seem like science fiction. But around the world, a league of financial elites believes that such a transhumanistic future — one where technology enhances human capabilities and lets us surpass biological limitations — is inevitable.
Science journalist Adam Becker counters this fantasy in More Everything Forever. In a deeply researched and engaging narrative, Becker dives into AI’s limitations to show that this vision of the future is not only unrealistic but also laden with racism, sexism and “endless capitalism of the most brutal sort.”
Take AI hallucinations, inaccurate information produced by a chatbot. Large language models like ChatGPT often make these mistakes. For instance, not too long ago, Becker asked ChatGPT whether the Great Wall of China is the only artificial structure that could be seen from Spain. No, the chatbot replied, but other structures can be seen from Spain, including the Eiffel Tower in Paris or skyscrapers in Dubai. These are obvious falsehoods.
Such hallucinations will continue, Becker writes, until an AI comes along that truly comprehends the connection between words and the concepts they represent. Some tech leaders argue that the solution is to just train AI on more data. But this thinking is flawed, Becker notes. Training these models on more and more internet content, which now includes the faulty content generated by AI chatbots themselves, could make some models collapse, moving further from their original training data and spewing nonsense. Such training could also exacerbate existing cultural biases within the tech, including hate speech, gender bias, racism and sexism.
More Everything Forever contends that tech billionaires’ seductive visions of a sci-fi future divert our attention from the real challenges that plague humankind — global warming, massive inequality, potential nuclear war. These political and social problems can’t be solved by technology, Becker argues convincingly. “Nothing is coming to save us. There’s no genie inside a computer that will grant us three wishes,” Becker writes. “Technology can’t heal the world. We must do it ourselves.”
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