Smart people predicting the end of the world

Each week we see them, new news articles about the dangers of social media, the total collapse of the environment within just five years, the pending economic crisis and lately about the imminent AI apocalypse. They all have one thing in common, lists of smart people.

These people can be all be sorted into two distinctive groups, the household names and the ‘this-of-that’ categories.

The household names are the easiest to detect, being famous for various reasons and commonly known. They are the inventers of you’re the things you use each and every day, the makers of the product that you own and the creators of the media and fiction you consume. They are the leaders, past and current, of parties and countries or the sitting CEOs of multinational companies. Maybe you don’t know who they are but you know their products, the company or organization they represent. Their inclusion on the list lends it weight and gravitas.

The other group are the less known people that needs to be marketed to us as the ‘this-of-that’. The father of modern artificial intelligent, the founder of a movement, the viceroy of soil depletion or the uncle of technology. They are the experts.

Although they are less famous, they bring depth to the argument. They have often had a long and career in the field that the subject, the thing that is ending the world, is situated. They might not be exactly experts on the topic at hand but their expertise is close to it, in the same ballpark so to speak.

These two groups have banded together behind a common cause, a subject that they feel they must borrow their voice, gravitas and support. Something that they find we, the others, have missed and that they must get across to us. It does not really matter what this subject is, the media will pick it up in the blink of an eye and soon it will be common knowledge that smart people have once again signed a list or penned a letter together.

Both these groups have something in common. They are not involved in day-to-day operations regarding the subject matter. They have made a name for themselves, their fortunes or mark on the world in the past tense. They are incredibly successful, yes, without a doubt. But they are seldom if ever active within the field that they criticizing, and if they are they tend to be far past their prime.

The subjects and causes they rally behind also have one thing in common. They are simplistically binary. That is perhaps a given for the whole end of the world spiel, they world is ending or not after all, but lends no room for nuances or wiggle room.

AI will destroy the world if we do not pause its development or partly outlaw its use. The top soil of the world is almost depleted by modern farming and will be completely gone or derived of all nutrients within the next handful of years. Large blanket statements that drive home the message, we are all doomed.

Often there is a ‘simple solution’ just stop doing that new thing that we, the people who penned the letter dislikes, and go back to how we did things before. Or rather, how I did things.

The inventor of the personal computer (who is more famous to some as that guy from Dancing with the stars) Steve Wozniak, turned our world upside down when he brought the computer into our homes and out of the office and laboratories. He started a revolution. Now he finds the next revolution to be out of control. Not remembering the discussion about job destruction (and I’m not talking about his partner Steve) that once was discussed and blamed on his inversion.

The world’s richest man, and according to his fans the smartest guy on earth, Elon Musk is convinced that AI will destroy us and that the development must be paused mediately. This at the same time as he scrambles to get ahead of the AI movement himself.

Geoffrey Hinton, a man who spent his entire career building artificial intelligences in some for and have had a well-paid job at Google for the last years doing just that, retires at the age of 75. And directly is skeptical to his own creation. Or rather to the creations that is derived from his creation, his own puzzle piece into the grand scheme of it is of course unproblematic. Why can’t we just go back to how things were?

Technology and the climate are my main interests, both professionally and personally. These are subjects that I keep up to date with and dare to say is quite well read about. This discussion, the world ending technology or trend, is nothing new and will reappear every decade or so as we find new and interesting ways to move forward and invent or reinvent our world.

This is not the first time that technology will lead to mass unemployment, the climate is just a few years from complete system failure or the rice of AI and the beginning of Terminator becoming reality. And it will not be the last.

There are plenty of experts out there that gladly will lend here name to any cause to get their point trough. But for each and every so-called expert there are multiple others that don’t speak up that are actively working or developing it.

The ‘one brave soul’ or ‘handful of brilliant minds that have seen the light’ motive is to the media as candy to a kid. They are drawn to it.

When a handful of people predict the immanent collapse of global agriculture, in bright contrast with more or less every government agency or research group in the world we (or the media) find that it must be some truth to it.

When a single man dares to suggest that vaccines are in fact dangerous that makes us disregard all other scientific endeavor into this field.

When a group of thousands of scientists that are actively working with climate and biodiversity related subjects pens their own letter and list, we (and the media) find that there is this other guy who say that they are wrong and that climate changes is just a cycle. The majority must be wrong.

We, as a species, like that narrative. A handful of people that overthrow the prior order and change the world. We tend to despise consensus and crave that disruptive mindset. So much that disruptive have become a marketing term and something that we just have to get into our pitch meeting. (Thanks Steve Jobs)

Lastly, before I ramble on indefinitely, let me just say that there are risks with anything with do. We should not play up their importance of for that matter down play them either.

Climate change is real and our world, as we know, it is about to end. But that means it will change. Things will be radically different and from what we know today not all that pleasant. But the world will still be there. Different, but still there.

AI will also transform our society and things will most likely never be the same again. That does not mean killer robots patrolling the streets or mass unemployment where a wealthy elite lives in luxury in gilded towers while all other gets to fight over the scraps left behind.

The future is not written and not as lacking in nuances and simplistically binary as smart people would have us believe.