The Misunderstood Role of AI Skeptics

Good opposition >>> bad opposition

Author

One of these days I read an essay by George Orwell about Rudyard Kipling — Anglo-Indian, conservative, and poet — “if we can call him that,” T. S. Eliot would say. Orwell concludes, after a sharp breakdown of Kipling’s work, that despite occupying a somewhat precarious intellectual position as a defender of the ruling power, he had one advantage over his liberal contemporaries: “a certain grip on reality.” And he adds:

The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘in such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions. Where it is a permanent and pensioned opposition, as in England, the quality of its thought deteriorates accordingly.

So today we’re going to talk about the most important opposition group in the modern world: the AI skeptics.

I say they’re the most important group not as a backhanded compliment, but because AI is the most important technology today and, as such, any group tied to it is the most important of its kind. That includes its skeptics just as much as its evangelists. Its creators, as well as its most devoted users (myself included). As it happens, given that AI has been advancing steadily for 80 years — first gradually, then…