Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
AI Doomerism has been in the news lately, especially with the loud, viral resignation of Jacob Coxon from Anthropic.
Maybe I've missed it, but I haven't seen any statements from CEOs and other execs who are more on the AI Booster side of the ledger.
🧵>>
Nathan Schneider
@emilymbender absolutely. Both are attempts to name the apocalypse, which is a claim that whatever they think has to be important to all of us.
Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
The Boosters say: AI is a thing, it's inevitable, it's imminent and it's going to solve all of our problems.
The Doomers say: AI is a thing, it's inevitable, it's imminent and it's going to kill us all.
These are obviously the same story, with just different twists at the end. And both are nonsense. There is "moderate" position between them, but there is space outside of that fantasy world where we can see the actual harms happening in the name of "AI".
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
As @alex and I write in The AI Con (see cp 6): even though the Boosters and the Doomers like to portray themselves as holding down opposite extremes of opinions on "AI", they are two sides of the same coin.
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
They can't, because the Doomer narrative *is* the Booster narrative. To debunk the Doomer stuff (and it *is* bunk), you have to point out that it's based on pure fantasy that the mathy maths are going to combust into consciousness ...
... or if not consciousness, then some thinking, reasoning, self-improving entity.
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
Where are Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, XD Huang, Jeff Dean on this? Why aren't they out there calling out the Doomer narrative for the nonsense that it is?
I have an hypothesis:
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
As I was walking home yesterday, I got flagged down by my neighbor who had heard a panic-inducing story about rogue AI from a friend over lunch and hoped I could talk her down.
I could and I did! But I am recognizing her distress (likely repeated across many many ordinary people) as yet another harm perpetuated by the people selling "AI" narratives.
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
Nadella, Pichai, Huang, Zuckerberg, Huang, Dean --- you all own this unhinged narrative just as much as the Doomers do.
* * *
Of course, they're happy to own this, because they benefit as much as Altman, Amodei, and Musk from keeping the policymakers focused on fantasies.
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feld
Skjeggtroll
It's like P. T. Barnum but without the flair. "Step right up. Come see the AI that will DESTROY THE WORLD! Look at its horrible consequences, gasp in fear as it shakes its chains. Will _you_ be its next victim? Only 50 pence to find out. Step right up!"
Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
I want everyone, especially journalists, to notice the silence of the tech execs about this. This includes people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg whose recent blog posts talk about balancing the benefits and harms of "AI", and don't include Doomer scenarios among the harms.
They are complicit in the misinforming of the public. They are complicit in stoking everyone's fear. They reap the benefits of the Doomer narrative because it is their narrative.
/fin
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