Historically, every new technology that matters, from electric lighting to automobiles to radio to the Internet, has sparked a moral panic – a social contagion that convinces people the new technology is going to destroy the world, or society, or both. The fine folks at Pessimists Archive have documented these technology-driven moral panics over the decades; their history makes the pattern vividly clear. It turns out this present panic is not even the first for AI.
Now, it is certainly the case that many new technologies have led to bad outcomes – often the same technologies that have been otherwise enormously beneficial to our welfare. So it’s not that the mere existence of a moral panic means there is nothing to be concerned about.
But a moral panic is by its very nature irrational – it takes what may be a legitimate concern and inflates it into a level of hysteria that ironically makes it harder to confront actually serious concerns.
Source: a16z
Marc Andreessen with a great take on the concerns of AI. Great read.
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