I really appreciate your perspective on how much of our drive for purpose is bound up in social signalling and the mismatch between our rational minds and the deeper layers of our psyche. It certainly resonates that many of the individuals gathered at NeurIPS (or any elite technical conference) are restless types, perhaps even deliberately so. Still, I find a guarded hope in the very fact that we keep asking these existential questions in the first place—that we haven’t yet fully succumbed to empty routine or robotic pursuit of prestige.
The capacity to reflect on “why we’re doing any of this” might be our uniquely human superpower—even if our attempts at answers are messy or incomplete. As AI becomes more intelligent, I’m cautiously optimistic we might engineer systems that help untangle some of our confusion. If these machines “carry our purposes,” as you say, maybe they’ll help us refine those purposes, or at least hold up a mirror we can learn from. After all, intelligence by itself doesn’t have to be sterile or destructive; we have an opportunity to shape it into something that catalyses a more integrated, life-affirming perspective for ourselves.
I really appreciate your perspective on how much of our drive for purpose is bound up in social signalling and the mismatch between our rational minds and the deeper layers of our psyche. It certainly resonates that many of the individuals gathered at NeurIPS (or any elite technical conference) are restless types, perhaps even deliberately so. Still, I find a guarded hope in the very fact that we keep asking these existential questions in the first place—that we haven’t yet fully succumbed to empty routine or robotic pursuit of prestige.
The capacity to reflect on “why we’re doing any of this” might be our uniquely human superpower—even if our attempts at answers are messy or incomplete. As AI becomes more intelligent, I’m cautiously optimistic we might engineer systems that help untangle some of our confusion. If these machines “carry our purposes,” as you say, maybe they’ll help us refine those purposes, or at least hold up a mirror we can learn from. After all, intelligence by itself doesn’t have to be sterile or destructive; we have an opportunity to shape it into something that catalyses a more integrated, life-affirming perspective for ourselves.