AI hysteria in an age of stagnation: a polemic essay on contemporary society
Do fear, fake jobs, post-2008 crony economics and hollow PR stop our progress towards a better world?
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Introduction
The most tragic form of loss isn't the loss of security; it is the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different.
- Ernst Bloch
AI (machine learning) has attracted a huge amount of attention over the past few years. Of course, the capabilities of generative AI, particularly the LLMs (Large Language Models), such as GPT but also the text-to-image models are downright impressive. When these technologies suddenly seemed to have gained traction in 2023, the Future of Life Institute published an open letter to pause certain AI developments for 6 months. The letter was signed by dozens of tech pioneers. A similar statement was later made by the Center for AI safety. Simply put, the authors suggested we need to take time so we can think about the implications of AI on society and, after this, follow-up with planning and regulation. Regulation should be in the hands of elected bodies instead of a few unelected private individuals, they argued. Some developments would even have to be abandoned. The EU AI act is perhaps the most far-reaching attempt to regulate AI but, basically, none of the radical measures like pausing development were actually put into practice at the time of writing. Despite this, the world is still here. Needless to say, skeptics wondered how sincere these initiatives were in the first place. Pausing AI development does not seem to be very realistic for a variety of reasons, such as its relative simplicity, low costs and wide availability. The open source models, combined with the power of crowds, are not that far behind commercial solutions in many cases. A leaked memo allegedly suggests big tech knows this too, stating that they have no “special sauce”. And why would better regulation only be applicable to AI? It will be quite a challenge to cause as much harm as the reckless behavior that led to the 2007/2008 global financial crisis. There has also been quite some pushback from more skeptical researchers within the AI-community who generally argue that the capabilities and mystery around generative AI may be overstated. Still, AI seems to be one of the more exciting and powerful technological developments in years and as with most technological developments, it also has the potential to negatively impact people. Autonomous military technology, unemployment, plagiarism as well as misinformation are real and present risks. However, it is hardly the first time we fear a bit of technological progress.
Many seem to have forgotten that very similar hysteria surrounded technology for decades. Take the iconic book “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, published back in the 70s. This book warns that the pace of technological change would be too fast and disruptive for society to handle. Toffler suggested that some kind of democratic panel had to be established to curb development and that the most disruptive technology even needed to be abandoned. Sounds familiar?1 Indeed, we have been here before. But it gets even more curious. Not only did these fears not materialize, the entire pace of technological progress actually never lived up to the predictions of futurologists (sometimes called futurists) in past 50 years. Technological singularity is always 20 years away, thinking machines would be here around the year 2000, TVs would have turned us into zombies and machines should have taken over our jobs for literally centuries. It can even be shown that technological, as well as social progress used to be much faster in many ways. However, many seem to believe the contrary with the exception of a few23 notably the late David Graeber on whose work I partly expand in parts I and II.
But then again, perhaps tempering progress is a good thing. There is no denying the horrors technology and industrial society can cause. We have fresh memories of industrial scale world wars, pollution, the exploitation of factory workers during the industrial revolution, and even now, especially in the third world. Not to mention the negative impact of things like social media on our psyche. It is easy to see technology as the forbidden fruit, the Faustian bargain or our Promethean punishment. With these bleak scenarios in mind it actually makes some sense to go straight back into an innocent primitive state, as various counter cultures, such as some of the hippie and New Age movements, have preached. However, we also have to recognize that in all of these technological advancements we find the new energy sources, agricultural methods and labor saving technologies that make our advanced and complex societies possible in the first place. Even developments that have different goals, like space exploration, have brought us a lot of prosperity. In many ways our world is in a better place now compared to the days of the “dark Satanic Mills” of the industrial revolution. Once the initial industrial revolution was over, the greatest jumps in technological progress were eventually accompanied by great jumps in social progress, life expectancy, and arguably general wellbeing as well 4. If that is true, stagnation might actually cause more suffering in our complex society given many of the existential problems we face such as the limitations of earth’s biosphere.
First, this assay will try to explore whether the hypothesis that technological advancements have slowed or even stagnated is plausible (PART I). At the time of writing, some famous techno-optimists and ‘oligarchs’ share the hypothesis. As such they commonly argue that technological progress should be accelerated, often by advocating simply for various flavors of “deregulation”5. Even though overregulation may be an obstacle, this perspective is often too simplistic and fails to properly analyze the complex economic, cultural and social atmosphere in which technology thrived in the past and why it may have slowed more recently. For this reason the second point this essay aims to demonstrate (Parts II-IV) is that the stagnation is more likely caused by the societal and economic malaise we see all around us: endless rent seeking, pointless consumerism, poor education, malignant monetary policies, speculative and financial bubbles, fake jobs, managerialism and hollow PR. The narratives of ever faster technological progress, innovative6 power of markets and economic growth are so deeply ingrained into our collective psyche that almost no one considers that much of it could be wrong. However, collective narratives have often been wrong. Moreover, narratives are often used to endorse existing power structures. So without further ado, let us unpack this.
→ Continue to Part I: On declining progress
A few writers are known for advocating for shutting down AI development. Obviously this is impossible, if only because AI and the necessary hardware are widely available and relatively cheap. To a degree, anyone can develop it.
Tyler Cowen (2011). The Great Stagnation. This book posited the thesis of slowing progress. The economic analysis is valuable and some of the solutions too - like putting more emphasis on scientific research. However, in my opinion the change of the political economy in the late 70s such as financialization played a big role in the stagnation. This became more evident after 2008. Cowen basically thinks it is the other way around. Peter Thiel also deserves to be mentioned with his observation back in 2013 at Yale where he stated “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters”. There are a few other public figures that seem to recognize the hypothesis as well recently, like Eric Weinstein.
I have been working on slowing ‘declining technological progress’ hypothesis for some time and found very few examples of writers that shared and really worked it out the with the exception of David Graeber (2012). The Baffler No. 19 pp. 66-84 in Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit. I used the example of Toffler and some other points with my own interpretation and analysis throughout (which is indicated). I generally expanded on the idea in general for our current society from a technological as well as an economic and cultural perspective.
However, this is not a futurist manifesto, nor is it accelerationist. The first is outdated and resulted in totalitarianism too often, in the latter the role of free market capitalism and economics in innovation/inventions is generally misunderstood, in my opinion.
We clearly see this in a recently published techno-optimist manifesto [The Techno-Optimist Manifesto | Andreessen Horowitz (a16z.com)] written by Marc Andreessen. They do recognize technology is the main driver of prosperity, that we need to dream, that stagnation is a problem and that we have missed opportunities for a better world already. Also Andreessen has stated he recognizes the power of open source, harnessing the power of crowds in a meritocratic market place. However, many accelerationists seem to miss that much of what they are proposing (often various flavors of a religious commitment to supposedly free markets) is not very different from the rhetoric we have been have been hearing since the 80s. This market fundamentalism is fundamentally influenced by a somewhat confused interpretation of game theory. Needless to say, for big breakthroughs, resources sometimes need to be concentrated instead of diversified. Basically I think these goals of looking for prosperity in progress is still very central to the enlightenment spirit. However, we also have to look carefully at what actually drove the age of enlightenment, what thinkers such as Adam Smith and John Locke actually proposed, and from there we have to look at the data of recent history, in particular the past 100 years. From this it is easy to see that there has to be a synthesis between unrestrained free markets and regulation, freedom and welfare programs, individualism and collective efforts. At least for the time being. This pragmatic strategy of testing and looking what works is, instead of dogmatism, is precisely what many late enlightenment thinkers like Kant would argue. Similarly, Adam Smith is not a free market absolutist either, he states that markets function perfectly under “perfect liberty”, which we have not achieved. So, we already know that the period from the 70s was less successful than the postwar years before. Therefore there is no need to double down on the “just deregulate” rhetoric that was common at the time as far as anyone actually believed that in the first place.
Innovation, of course, can mean many things and literature about how innovation works generally makes some distinction between disruptive innovation, inventions in fundamental science or economic innovations. In many cases innovations are purely economic; new ways to realize revenue. Indeed, revolutions in advertisement or ways to actually maintain scarcity might as well be innovations. However, in this essay innovation should be understood synonymous with technological and social progress. Of course, this still has a subjective component.