A simple, yet memorable and provocative recapitulation:
“They’re coding in the wrong space!”
Joan’s newsletter piece itself is utterly compelling, linked here in case you haven’t seen it: Everyone in AI is building the wrong thing for the same reason
For those readers too young to recognize the allusion from this dim photo and the paraphrase, please stream or rent ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (1981) at your earliest opportunity.
A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, “this is where the light is”.
Moloch is the light of the world.
Indeed.
I am concerned that I come across as too negative about AI overall. I’m actually not anti-it. I think I’d best categorise myself as a skeptical optimist.
I suppose your writing could be taken that way, but not by anyone who takes the time to read it. You’re good at maintaining the distinction between the potential uses of AI — some good, some not so much, most yet to be understood — and the mostly negative effects of market forces and public gullibility on exploration of the possibilities.
Which isn’t to say most readers, especially those you haven’t reached yet, might judge and then dismiss you as too negative. Always that tension between building stronger bonds with the choir you have versus getting a hearing from those who haven’t joined yet.
