Funny quote about covering AI as a journalist from a New York Times article about the drone incursions in Denmark.
Then of course the same mix of uncertainty and mystery attaches to artificial intelligence (itself one of the key powers behind the drone revolution), whose impact is already sweeping — everyone’s stock market portfolio is now pegged to the wild A.I. bets of the big technology companies — without anyone really having clarity about what the technology is going to be capable of doing in 2027, let alone in 2035.
Since the job of the pundit is, in part, to make predictions about how the world will look the day after tomorrow, this is a source of continuing frustration on a scale I haven’t experienced before. I write about artificial intelligence, I talk to experts, I try to read the strongest takes, but throughout I’m limited not just by my lack of technical expertise but also by a deeper unknowability that attaches to the project.
Imagine if you were trying to write intelligently about the socioeconomic impact of the railroad in the middle of the 19th century, and half the people investing in trains were convinced that the next step after transcontinental railways would be a railway to the moon, a skeptical minority was sure that the investors in the Union Pacific would all go bankrupt, many analysts were convinced that trains were developing their own form of consciousness, reasonable-seeming observers pegged the likelihood of a train-driven apocalypse at 20 or 30 percent, and peculiar cults of engine worship were developing on the fringes of the industry.
What would you reasonably say about this world? The prime minister of Denmark already gave the only possible answer: Raise your alert levels, and prepare for various scenarios.
Funny quote about covering AI as a journalist from a New York Times article about the drone incursions in Denmark.
That sounds impressively self-aware. Most journalists would just “predict” the future, expressing certainty.