I’m curious whether you think this epistemic disruption could be analogous at all to the Internet, social media, and smartphones? These technologies were greeted with great optimism not unlike the AI hype we are seeing today, and undoubtedly we all agree that these technologies have been beneficial in many ways. And yet we have seen the rise of vaccine hesitancy, loss of trust in our institutions, and adolescent anxiety that has led to a push to ban smartphone use in schools. I genuinely don’t know if I believe that society as a whole is better for it. I think fundamentally, all of these issues come down to the fact that we are developing systems that we didn’t evolve to live with. Our brains are the same brains that were optimized for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. While superintelligence has theoretical benefits, I completely agree with you that we are not thinking enough about the issue of cognitive and social compatibility with our little ape brains.
I’m curious whether you think this epistemic disruption could be analogous at all to the Internet, social media, and smartphones? These technologies were greeted with great optimism not unlike the AI hype we are seeing today, and undoubtedly we all agree that these technologies have been beneficial in many ways. And yet we have seen the rise of vaccine hesitancy, loss of trust in our institutions, and adolescent anxiety that has led to a push to ban smartphone use in schools. I genuinely don’t know if I believe that society as a whole is better for it. I think fundamentally, all of these issues come down to the fact that we are developing systems that we didn’t evolve to live with. Our brains are the same brains that were optimized for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. While superintelligence has theoretical benefits, I completely agree with you that we are not thinking enough about the issue of cognitive and social compatibility with our little ape brains.