Adam Gamwell
@anthrocurious
In pursuit of mutual thriving. Cultural Anthropologist, Technologist, Dad, musician, vibe maker-coder,
Adam Gamwell
anthrocurious.com
Humanity is waking up to the challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence, but we don’t yet understand our role. People talk about unexplainable AI when they should be more concerned about the unexplainable humans running the companies that develop the AI. (Hiya, Sam!) People worried about AI taking their jobs and taking control are... See more
Esther Dyson • Don’t Fuss About Training AIs. Train Our Kids
Aside from the doomers who believe that AI will kill us all and the techno-utopians who believe it will solve all of our problems, there are three main ways that people seem to be thinking about AI.
At one extreme, you might fear that AI will take your job. Certainly, you’ve read as much in the press, and it does seem to be getting better and... See more
At one extreme, you might fear that AI will take your job. Certainly, you’ve read as much in the press, and it does seem to be getting better and... See more
When we introduce new machines, we also disrupt social structures, games, and the rules of those games. With paradigm shifts come lots of progress, yes. But agents of progress are agents of chaos too. They create agitation and anxiety.
I see many shades of this, but I’ll narrow it down to three major types:
Anxiety of incompetence: my skills are devalued and i have to learn new ones
Anxiety of irrelevance: people might not relate to, value, or think about me
Anxiety of uncertainty: I don’t know what the future holds and it feels fickle
I think the most worrisome aspect of AI systems in the short term is that we will give them too much autonomy without being fully aware of their limitations and vulnerabilities. We tend to anthropomorphize AI systems: we impute human qualities to them and end up overestimating the extent to which these systems can actually be fully trusted.
Melanie Mitchell • Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans
For me, that means limiting that amount that I do, even if that disappoints people; sharing my needs as an autistic person at the start of all event bookings; setting aside specific times for publicity, and closely guarding my writing time; and saying ‘no’ to opportunities that are not a great fit for me (for example, events in noisy, crowded... See more
“There can be no experience of the world without the experiencer and that, my dear friends, is us.”
“Before anyone can make theories or get data or have ideas about the world, there must be the raw presence of being-in-the-world. The world doesn’t appear in the abstract to a disembodied perspective floating in space… it appears to us, exactly where... See more
“Before anyone can make theories or get data or have ideas about the world, there must be the raw presence of being-in-the-world. The world doesn’t appear in the abstract to a disembodied perspective floating in space… it appears to us, exactly where... See more
People worried about AI taking their jobs and taking control are competing with a myth. Instead, people should train themselves to be better humans even as they develop better AI. People are still in control, but they need to use that control wisely, ethically and carefully.
Esther Dyson • Don’t Fuss About Training AIs. Train Our Kids
Imagine if we could somehow show the people of the eighteenth century a simple child’s toy from today — say, a speaking doll.
The common folk would marvel at its ability to speak its few stock phrases. The scientists and engineers would marvel even more at its innards; at the minutely detailed silicon; at the bewildering complexity soon to be within... See more
The common folk would marvel at its ability to speak its few stock phrases. The scientists and engineers would marvel even more at its innards; at the minutely detailed silicon; at the bewildering complexity soon to be within... See more
Towards an experience of humanity
A short meditation on remembering where we place value
focus less on AI as something separate from humans, and more on tools that enhance human cognition rather than replacing it… If we want a future that is both superintelligent and "human", one where human beings are not just pets, but actually retain meaningful agency over the world, then it feels like something like this is the most natural option.