The Social Media Panicmongers Have Pivoted to AI

[Celerity]

The science populists who stoked a Reefer Madness-like hysteria about social media are onto their next target—and predictably predicting the imminent end of the world.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-social-media-panic-mongers-have-pivoted-to-ai



Artificial intelligence (AI) has in 2023 quickly eclipsed social media and smartphones as the technology du jour for secular doomsday preachers. Concerns about content-ranking algorithms and “dark patterns” suddenly felt quaint compared to sentient AI exterminating (or displacing) every human on the planet. Mark Zuckerberg, once an unyielding digital titan, now feels like MySpace Tom reigning over an uncool, increasingly irrelevant virtual realm.

This sudden narrative shift posed a dilemma for a cottage industry of self-styled “tech-ethicists” who once effortlessly garnered book deals, headlines, and interviews on the topic of social media-induced societal collapse. Now, they find themselves outcompeted in the attention economy by the likes of AI safety researchers like Elizer Yudkowsky, who called for theoretical nuclear strikes on server farms in Time magazine, and Connor Leahy, who went on CNN to warn Christine Amanpour about the extinction of the human race. So, they hastily adjusted their messaging to compete.

Roger McNamee, author of the book, Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, dismissed the positive potential of AI on CNN, only days after a New York Times report on AI helping a paralyzed man walk again. Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen predicted 10 million deaths from social media while promoting her new book, The Power of One: How I Found the Strength to Tell the Truth and Why I Blew the Whistle on Facebook. The influential public intellectual Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, went from calling free information “dangerous” to suggesting tech executives should face jail for allowing AI generated profiles. All three signed their names to a March 2023 open letter—released by the Elon Musk-backed Future of Life Institute—which demanded a six-month hiatus on AI development.

Also among the letter’s signees was Tristan Harris, the photogenic poster boy of tech-ethicism who famously eschewed his six-figure Silicon Valley salary—after pushing for design ethics at Google—to start the Center for Humane Tech, where he led a crusade against smartphones and social media. Harris’ influence and profile has now risen to the point of being invited to a recent Senate meeting on AI, along with Bill Gates and Elon Musk. A month after the letter’s publication, Harris and his team delivered a chilling presentation titled, “The AI Dilemma,” a reference to the social media-panic documentary, The Social Dilemma, of which they were also heavily involved. In the film, Harris claimed, “no one ever said this about the bicycle”—in regards to social media’s impact on society—which is an ahistorical statement, quickly (and ironically) fact-checked on social media.

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[stuck in the middle]

1. Risk Benefit Analysis?

who called for theoretical nuclear strikes on server farms

Acceptable Risks by Charlie King about the 1957 Yucca Flats Big Smokey Atomic Test

Acceptable Risks - Charlie King

[usonian]

2. Pay no attention to apocalyptic types.

I did a search for "most important news" as opposed to clickbait, editors chasing social media trends instead what is really important!

Only hit was some guy's apocalyptic site full of doom and doom.

They find it everywhere.

I just ask if something helps people en masse or a handful of über geeks and privileged. Easy and accurate.

What would REALLY help me is not AI, but a butler. Life ain't that complex unless you make it so.

[highplainsdem]

3. I've read countless articles on AI since late last year, and I don't recall a single

mention of Roger McNamee or Tristan Harris. Not sure why that article lumps Francis Haugen in with them when the article they link to for her has nothing on AI.

Harari is someone mentioned in a Guardian piece I excerpted, at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/06/ai-firms-face-prison-creation-fake-humans-yuval-noah-harari .

But the Daily Beast article misrepresents what he said. He was concerned not about "AI generated profiles" - which sounds like someone using ChatGPT to write a Twitter profile - but about AI being used to create lots of counterfeit people online, fake people presented as real humans, participating on social media and posting a lot to influence others, never disclosing what they post is AI content. That's what he would want AI company execs to possibly get criminal penalties for, if it was the only way to stop it.

That Daily Beast article also misrepresents what McNamee said on CNN, which I found at https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/05/31/exp-ai-warning-fst-053112pseg3-cnni-world.cnn . What McNamee wants, basically, is EU style regulation. He did not "dismiss the positive potential of AI" - he praised the potential of scientific AI with properly curated data sets. He was critical of generative AI trained on data sets of stolen intellectual property.

Anyway, since that Daily Beast writer twisted what Harari and McNamee said, and doesn't link to anything Haugen said about AI, that leaves only Tristan Harris. I can't recall seeing his name before this recent Senate meeting. When I skimmed Google News for mentions of him going back months, it seemed like Fox News gave him more attention than other news organizations did. The Daily Beast article also says he's appeared on Joe Rogan and Glenn Beck's shows.

Btw, the author of that Daily Beast article is against those "anti-modernity" people who have been concerned about the risks of nuclear power plants, GMOs and overpopulation. Did you see his next-to-last paragraph?

It is this kind of utilitarian anti-modernity mindset that has caused unconscionable harm over the past half-century. From the catastrophic obstruction of nuclear power development and resulting increase in carbon emissions, to the overpopulation panic and subsequent forced sterilizations in China, to the scientific populist crusade against GMOs and the millions of developing world children that have lost their sight and lives as a result—the dangers of over-precaution and scientific populism are undeniable.