"if AI evangelists can convince us that AGI is possible, imminent, and dangerous, we might be compelled to entrust our fate to them. Hype and doom, in other words, are two sides of the same (bit)coin. “AI safety” principles, teams, and initiatives are proliferating in part to hoard power and resources and, ultimately, to engineer the future in their own image. The aim: To lull us into acquiescence so that they can carry on business as usual.
I have analyzed elsewhere the harmful impacts of AI. In the rest of this essay, I focus on AI’s insidious inputs—the eugenic values and logics of those who create these systems, cloaking them in the rhetoric of salvation. Breathless buzzwords like “efficiency,” “novelty,” and “productivity” conceal a self-serving vision: the future imagined by AI evangelists is meant only for a small sliver of humanity. The rest of us will be left clamoring to survive on a boiling planet. Take the autonomous weapons systems raining hell on Palestinians—why else give them saccharine-sounding names like Lavender and the Gospel if not to make these deadly inventions seem benevolent? If we listen carefully to the good word of tech evangelists, we can hear the groans of those buried under the rubble of progress.
Many of the same people behind the technologies wreaking havoc today—workplace algorithms intensifying the pace of work, facial recognition software leading to false arrests, automated triage systems rationing quality healthcare, and “smart” weapons ripping through flesh with a click—also brand themselves as humanity’s saviors."
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-new-artificial-intelligentsia/
#AI #GenerativeAI #AGI #Eugenics #AISafety