A few days ago I was looking at one of the many recent (post-hours) polls that show an increasingly gloomy mood for the GOP and favorable signs for the Democrats. Something else surprised me about these surveys: people really Really down by AI. Now, to be clear, this is kind of a drastic assumption, almost bordering on prejudice in the world I live in: a fairly educated, generally left-of-center world. In this world, everyone feels differently about AI and for many good reasons, although many are also incorporating AI into aspects of their professional lives. (This is a widespread dichotomy: we tend to be skeptical of AI; AI also allows our programmers to be much more productive.) What has struck me, however, is how widespread skepticism or hostility is. This applies to demographics, age and political beliefs.
There are many good reasons for this. The explosive growth of investment in artificial intelligence poses various short- and long-term environmental hazards; it could… well, take your job away (depressive); this leads to higher prices for energy resources, such common parts of the modern economy as computer memory; and… oh, there's one thing that even the biggest AI advocates talk about and are strangely fascinated by… the non-trivial possibility that AI could lead to the extermination of humanity (bummer!). It's a list of horrors that leaves many of us wondering: What the hell are we doing here?
