Blind Acceptance is a Curse in Life and Tech
When faced with this unfamiliar and unsettling situation, we often long for the comfort and simplicity of the past. This is evident in the behavior of a publication that focuses on technology and its future impact, as it devotes attention to the remake of an old beloved machine while simultaneously ridiculing someone attempting to innovate in the field of computing.
You can’t stop technological progress; Malik is right about that. Voice and gesture-controlled devices and AI will find its way into more aspects of our lives, and it will be useful is some cases.
But dismissing any criticism on the current arms race to commercialise AI as nostalgia is shortsighted, to say the least. We’ve seen what happens if we let hyperbolic Silicon Valley venture capitalists and CEOs fund and develop products and entrench them in everyday life without ethical checks and balances: Depressed teenagers, hatred, and a president called Trump.
Questioning how a new technology will affect our society, how it will change the job market and what it does to the already unfair distribution of wealth isn’t nostalgia; it’s anyone’s right and journalist’s duty.
So is ridiculing a class of people who believe their little device will change the world. Especially when these leaders position themselves as the saviours of humanity, engineers of god-like machines, while they only push their own agenda to line their pockets. Humane‘s AI pin is an exciting piece of technology and a glimpse into the future of human-computer-interaction. But it doesn’t solve any of the worlds most pressing problems. There’s a chance that, if unregulated, these products cause even more harm.
It’s not nostalgia when people warn about the dangers of AI; it’s justified criticism and concern rooted in how the last twenty years of technological development under the dominance of Silicon Valley have played out.
It’s not nostalgia that is the curse in life and tech, blindly celebrating every new technology coming out of one city is.