Emerging Technology is Not Always in Line With People’s Needs
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
Re your enthusiasm for scary science in the Jan. 3-9 Examiner, here’s a cautionary tale: Back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, I was a big fan of the Whole Earth Catalog and The WELL’s enthusiasm for the emerging internet. The gleaming prospect of a worldwide web connecting like minds across the globe overlooked other interpretations of a web: the lurking spider that would spread the disfunctions of social media we suffer from now.
If you have the chance to watch “Forbidden Planet,” alongside the charm of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” set in the space age, was a scary subplot uncovered by Dr. Morbius, the mission scientist. While trying to identify the invisible monster killing off the astronauts, Morbius discovers that the planet’s extinct society had pooled their minds in the interest of advancing their civilization and science – only to have a collective evil id emerge that destroys them all and lives on for thousands of years to menace future settlers. In real time, something similar emerged from the bright promise of the internet.
I get your enthusiasm for ChatGPT, but suggest imagining the results of a collaborative of the best scientific and technical minds working on a single initiative, not least being that their creation will pool its creators’ diverse intelligences to write its own algorithms. Not saying this is inherently evil, but there’s zero reason to think its ideas and goals would be copacetic with our own human ones.
Karen Jescavage-Bernard
Croton-on-Hudson
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