Pro-AI People and Anti-AI People Are Good People
Most hearts are good, including those of your ideological enemies
Join The Algorithmic Bridge, a blog about AI that’s actually about people.
Most hearts are good. Most disputes, however profound they seem, can be mitigated by an effort to understand those hearts that beat to a different rhythm than yours. But most people don’t do that. If I side with the tech powers turning this green paradise into a wasteland, you strip me of my humanity. If I fail to embrace the promises of progress, clothed in Luddite beliefs, you shame me in a bath of ignorance.
Darkened by the wrong beating cadence and the murkiest circumstances, my heart looks black, undeserving of your consideration. To you, I’m evil. Philosopher Hannah Arendt already wrote about such banalities so I won’t try to add here to her thoughts. This is merely a reminder: Yes, people get swept away by cruelty-turned-normality, yet — and this is the reading I’ll focus on — few people are truly evil.
These days I’m out of sync. Sides have been picked and considerations for empathy and common ground dismissed. But I’m no Luddite and no techno-optimist. I remain split in two, just like the world around me, and bear the burden of trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. Many artists denounce…
