humans vs. machines
how humans drive technological innovation
A lot has been written about humans vs. machines. Artificial intelligence has made the distinction less clear and at the same time, more important to understand. People often forget that AI, despite its eerily human capability, remains a technology. And technology is a type of human innovation. And all human innovations typically follow the same basic tenets: they will survive as long it is evolutionarily beneficial to enough humans.
Technology is a tool created by humans
We sometimes think of technology as “outside of the natural.” Machines, computers, and tech are otherworldly, mechanistic algorithms that do complicated tasks. However, at its most basic, technology is simply a tool created by humans. The definition of technology is “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, often involving tools, machines, and systems.”
The history of technology in this sense goes beyond computers and machines. The first technology was the wheel. Airplanes, trains, and the steam engine all represented leaps forward for scientific application. Phones, telecom lines, and antibiotics were necessary precursors to the technological innovations of today.
Technology is a form of innovation
Over time, technology has also become synonymous with innovation. Innovation, while often enabled by new tools or technologies, goes beyond just technology and represents a new way of looking at or doing things. Innovation is not limited to things but also includes institutions i.e. governments or financial institutions.
The pyramids of Giza or the New York skyline were all forms of human innovation. EDM or impressionist art were innovations. Innovations additionally include concepts such as capitalism, communism, and democracy. They include the concepts of money, foreign exchange, and inflation. Innovations represent a key driver of productivity, growth, and improvement in life.
Over the last few years, however, technology or machines have been the guiding innovations driving society forward. From the internet to the mobile phone to self-driving cars, technology has enabled structural changes in how we work, eat, live, and pray. Artificial intelligence appears to be one of these generational innovations.
Innovation exists within the human context not outside of it
However, it is important to remind ourselves that innovations are typically created for a reason or purpose. They do not come out of thin air but often after years, decades, generations of work and resources. The rocket was created because humans wanted to conquer space. The moon landing was achieved to show national domination. Capitalism was formed to create prosperity.
That said, not every innovation is intentional and the results of innovation are not often known beforehand. Penicillin was invented accidentally and went on to become one of the core drugs to save millions of lives. The atomic bomb / nuclear weapon was created to end World War II and has become a symbol of peace and deterrence.
“Almost no prerequisite to any major invention was invented with that invention in mind.” ~ Kenneth O. Stanley, Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective
The human context of artificial intelligence
To understand AI we must understand why and how it was created. AI’s origin story is complex with early connections to the tech giant Google, leading academics in Stanford, and promising entrepreneurs at YCombinator. The initial goal of OpenAI was to keep AI - or AGI - out of the hands of corporate giants like Google.
That said, the success of OpenAI and chatGPT in November 2022 was a surprise, even to the company itself. No one could have predicted the virality and adoption of AI. No one could have predicted that LLMs would spark billions of dollars of investment to build out infrastructure, compute, and applications of AI.
Fast forward to today, OpenAI is far from the only company competing in the AI race. From the large tech companies to new start ups to existing businesses, there is a rush to implement AI. The term AI has gone from the world of academics to every day use. We’ve also started to hear a lot of heavy debate from policy to ethics on whether AI is good or bad for society, which often happens when a new technology seems powerful.
Innovation is not inherently good or evil
There are a couple extremist views on technology and innovation. On one hand, there is the techno-optimist view: the world’s hardest problems from biological breakthroughs to climate change will be solved with technology. On the other hand, there is the techno-pessimist view: technology is bad. Change will inevitably lead to negative impact over time. Humans are better off without new innovation.
The reality is, innovation is not inherently good or evil. Innovation happens usually for a couple reasons: 1) it will help those who create it or 2) the people that create it believe it will help other people / humanity. Even if created with good intentions, few innovations remain in the world of positive for long.
Sam Altman has said publicly that the ultimate goal of AGI is to solve the world’s hardest problems and cure disease. However, OpenAI’s initial creation was a consumer chatbot used by millions of people around the world. Alongside the positive benefits, we’ve already been to see some of the negative effects of chatGPT.
From chatGPT psychosis to copyright infringement, chatGPT has created a whole new world of ethics and consumer protections that likely need to be addressed. On the other side, doomers of AI continue to cite deep fears of artificial intelligence going rogue and destroying humanity. This is seen in sci fi movies like Origin or Robots.
In our excitement, we often forget that technology adoption is driven by emotion as much as it is by logic.
Fear and greed drive innovation as much as logic and thinking.
Every time a novel technological innovation happens, there is a tendency to follow the same cycle: 1) denial, 2) fear, 3) acceptance, 4) greed, and 5) over-reliance. Technology cycles are not dissimilar to market cycles in that human emotions play a larger role than people think.
Greed, and fear of missing out, often drive the greatest early investments into new technological innovation. While innovations often start off idealistic, a capitalist system does not support an innovation that does not make money or establish power. The success of the biggest tech giants today, Google and Meta, was directly tied to their ability to monetize a large distribution base with ads.
When it comes to AI, it’s not a battle of man vs. machines, but rather man vs. man. While many ask, will machines destroy us? The better question to ask is whether there is an incentive for certain humans to create a machine that will create more harm for humanity than good? If so, can it be monetized?
Morality doesn’t win, survival does
Humans create these things then worry whether the things they created were for good or for evil. Morality doesn’t necessarily win in the end but survival does.
Communism - and the soviet union - broke because it did not make economic sense for most humans. Dictatorships like Iran or South Korea survive because enough power in the strong and enough economic growth among the broader people ensure there is support for the ruling class.
Similarly, technologies like mobile, social media, and now artificial intelligence, will survive so long as there are enough profits to be made and people to benefit that offsets the harm. Thinking of technology as separate from humans is like thinking of democracy as separate from humans or banks as separate from humans.
We create things because they are useful to us. If they remain useful enough, they stay around. If they are no longer useful to enough people, they go extinct. Holding back technological progress is like holding back evolution. There is no path but to move forward. AI is unlikely to be an exception.