How can we better understand the current AI hype?

Paris Marx’s “Tech Won’t Save Us” podcast not only brings a lot of depth and critical analysis on what’s going on in the tech world, but it also connects that with issues of political economy, geopolitics. He does great work in mapping who’s out there and what the key issues are, and trying to be as diverse as possible in terms of the interviewees. I discover people with new insights on topics that I’m following.

What's one fact about AI that everyone should know?

The more we think about AI as something magical, the more we lose sight of the fact that it’s advanced statistics. Why do we constantly need to compare a statistical model with human intelligence? If we take that for granted, then we have a very narrow way of thinking about human intelligence. 

If all we do is just rework what’s already out there and present it in a stylized way, then yeah, of course, we can be replaced by AI. 

But if we start thinking that the creative tasks that both journalists, scholars, and many others do in their everyday life go beyond what would be described as just looking at the data that is out there and trying to create an output on that basis, which assumes intelligence encompasses more, then definitely AI cannot replace our work.

AI is pushed on us for everything, even as a method of invention. Our ability to create paradigm shifts will be constrained, simply because AI cannot go beyond what was already done before. I think AI really has a lot of implications on how people think. We will become closer to AIs, not because AI progressed, but because we are downgrading our capacity of creative thinking. And this has already been shown even in papers offered by people from Microsoft. If even Microsoft is saying that, imagine what is really going on.

What future are you looking forward to?

We need to work more on a future that is inclusive to everyone, where technological development empowers everyone, where such development only occurs as long as it’s democratic, it’s open, and complies with planetary boundaries.

I’d like to see a future where we are capable of going ultimately beyond the imperative of growth. Underlying that imperative is the fake promise that technology will bring progress and prosperity and a better life for everyone. Yet none of this is being delivered. Not every innovation brings economic growth. Economic growth does not necessarily bring progress. In the midst of an ecological crisis, this becomes even clearer.

When people say that AI will extinct us all, I think that the question is irrelevant because we’re already heading toward extinction on our own – by ignoring the ecological crisis, capitalism is already walking towards human extinction and destroying the planet.

We all want to live better, but we need to first of all understand why we’re living so badly today. That means trying to understand capitalism and why it has systemically failed most of the population. That’s crucial for crafting collectively, democratically from today, the future that we want to live in.