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It might be cheap upon studying Marc Andreessen’s “techno-optimist manifesto”, to really feel considerably perplexed, after which to marvel: is the billionaire bitcoin-backing enterprise capitalist OK?
In spite of everything, the 5,000-odd-word essay, printed on his VC fund a16z’s web site on Monday, does include such phrases as: “Love doesn’t scale . . . Let’s follow cash”; “We imagine within the romance of expertise . . . the eros of the prepare, the automobile, the electrical mild”; and, maybe most startlingly: “We imagine any deceleration of AI will value lives. Deaths that have been preventable by the AI that was prevented from present is a type of homicide.”
But many Silicon Valley varieties who’ve learn Andreessen’s screed — the central argument of which is that “there isn’t a materials drawback . . . that can not be solved with extra expertise” — appear not solely to see nothing even mildly uncommon about it, however to imagine that it’s truly a piece of genius.
“That is the trail in the direction of progress,” Brian Armstrong, founding father of crypto change Coinbase, enthused on X. “Decel narratives are throughout us in well-liked tradition and in conferences amongst elites. Thanks @a16z for a breath of recent air,” he added. The truth that a16z is an investor in his firm presumably makes the air further recent.
Now, in case you are questioning what Armstrong is perhaps speaking about when he says “decel narratives”, permit me to elucidate. “Decel” stands for “decelerationist” and is a considerably dismissive slang time period utilized by individuals who take into account themselves a part of the fledgling “e/acc community”.
“E/acc”, in flip, stands for “efficient accelerationism”, an ideology embraced by Andreessen that’s primarily based round the concept the event of expertise — particularly of synthetic intelligence — mustn’t simply be allowed to proceed with out constraint, however must be accelerated.
“We imagine that we’re, have been, and can all the time be the masters of expertise, not mastered by expertise,” Andreessen writes. “Sufferer mentality is a curse in each area of life, together with in our relationship with expertise — each pointless and self-defeating. We aren’t victims, we’re conquerors.”
He made a equally wide-eyed argument throughout a recent episode of the Making Sense with Sam Harris podcast, during which he was explaining to Harris what he believes is so magnificent and foolproof about synthetic normal intelligence (AGI).
“The explanation this factor works, the massive breakthrough, is that we loaded us into it . . . it’s just like the world’s greatest, finest-detailed mirror. That’s unbelievable,” he gushed. When Harris, significantly much less optimistic, identified to Andreessen that if AGI is a mirrored image of humanity, then it might additionally replicate the dangerous in people, Andreessen’s response was merely: “However what’s the ethical of each story? The ethical of each story is the nice guys win.”
I don’t know if I might be thought of a “decel” — for one factor, I’m unsure whether or not pausing the event of AI could be both helpful or attainable, significantly on condition that it isn’t simply western nations which can be engaged on it. However what I’m sure of is that Andreessen’s blind religion in all expertise is harmful.
Additionally it is, in fact, deeply self-interested. To return to Armstrong’s tweet: you would possibly marvel how a person who has made himself an estimated fortune of $3.3bn by creaming off a price each time somebody trades one of many 242 essentially useless crypto coins he gives on his platform can speak, with what seems to be a straight face, to a person reportedly value $1.8bn in regards to the “elites” on this means. However that is simply the type of techno-populist rhetoric that crypto bros have been pushing for years — whereas lining their pockets.
Given the path crypto has been stepping into since a16z launched their $4.5bn crypto fund final yr, it’s maybe unsurprising that Andreessen doesn’t as soon as point out cryptocurrencies or “Web3” (remember that?) in his techno-utopian sermon. He does, nonetheless, roll out the basic line that whereas “decentralisation harnesses complexity for the good thing about everybody; centralisation will starve you to demise.” It’s onerous to take such a line critically from the top of a VC fund with $35bn in assets under management.
Confronted with the morally bankrupt spectacle of crypto, it is usually onerous to swallow the concept expertise is all constructive and must be left to speed up advert infinitum. However there are various different areas, outdoors AI and crypto, during which expertise does enormous quantities of hurt — smartphones and social media, as an illustration, have had devastating effects on the psychological well being of youngsters and youngsters.
Merely having extra shouldn’t be the reply to our gravest issues. It’s solely the issues that can’t “scale” that basically will help: compassion, kindness, empathy and, sure, love.
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