Why Do We Fear Technology?

How many times throughout history has technology been foretold to spell the end of civilization? Do you think a worldwide disaster, such as one that would render mankind obsolete, is overdue at this point? If a broken clock is correct at least twice a day, how can we still believe the doomsday clock when it hasn’t been correct once?

Listen, I’m fully aware that words have power, and I’m familiar with the law of attraction, which allows things to be talked into reality. Yet I lack the ability to send forth enough good energy into the Universe to counteract the fear and terror techniques employed to deceive the general people, particularly when it comes to cutting-edge technology. I can’t help but think that it is for social control.

Unless you’re a quick programmer, you can’t look at any social media network today without being sure that generative AI will leave you and everyone you know, worst case dead, or best case jobless. I really just scrolled through a podcast recording that began,“If you are a creative, you are in trouble,” followed by another podcaster shrieking into a microphone about an inch from his mouth, “Everybody is getting fired! Everybody is losing their job!”

Why is there such fervour for something that is yet so unknown? Don’t get me wrong: I believe in much of artificial intelligence’s promise, even while I realise its inherent bias and am aware that most of what it creates isn’t accurate or genuine reality.

Despite this, I believe it still has the capacity to reinvent sectors and induce a paradigm shift unlike any other technology. Yet, you cannot persuade me that technology will ruin the planet or replace creatives. That is just not the case. Let’s concentrate on the latter.

If you ask me, AI will replace the people who think it will, and when it’s done with those people, there are plenty other subsets of people it targets. Don’t get me started on how AI is a threat to black and brown history; before they get to creatives, I’m basically saying they’ll be the last to go.

I may be simplifying this way too much, but AI’s success metrics are measured by its ability to mimic humans: The closer it is to that, the more advanced it is considered. What’s interesting though is that as much as we define it as intelligence, it is in actuality designed to regurgitate existing content that it nicely formatted. It’s almost glorified plagiarism — again oversimplifying — which is easy because it’s pulling from an internet that is filled with content previously generated by humans, the same content created by creatives. If there are no creatives to continue making new content that the AI can pull from, it’ll eventually start repeating itself without any evolution. Then you’ll start seeing the same responses over and over again because, as much as we’d want to believe it isn’t the case, generative AI is finite. Humans are AI’s power source; if you take away the human…you get my point.

It is critical that we realise this because fear mongering, which has always been a feature of technology, is now driving highly competent folks to doubt their potential to be valuable in the future, as if one day they would wake up and AI will be more human than they are.

Never forget what makes you unique, what makes you human. Keep in mind that AI is attempting to be you, not the other way around. And if we do end up facing catastrophic mass extinction, it will be at our own hands rather than an AI-powered robotic one.

Source: Swalé, Founder, Iuncta