>
At the invention of the printing press, there were people with this same energy. Obviously those people were wrong.Were they?
The first thing the printing press did was to break Christianity. It's what made attempts at reforming the Catholic Church finally stick, enabling what we now call Reformation to happen. Reformation forever broke Christianity into pieces, and in the process it started a bunch of religious wars in Europe, as well as tons of neighborly carnage.
> And if we had taken their "lesson", then human society would be in a much worse place.
Was the invention of the printing press a net good for humanity? Most certainly so, looking back from today. Did people living back then knew what they were getting into? Not really. And since their share of the fruits of that invention was mostly bloodshed, job loss, and shattering of the world order they knew, I wouldn't blame them from being pissed off about getting the short end of the stick, and perhaps looking for ways to undo it.
I'm starting to think that talking about inventions as good or bad (or the cop-out, "dual use") is bad framing. Rather, it seems to me that every major invention will eventually turn out beneficial[0], but introducing an invention always first extracts a cost in blood. Be it fire or printing press or atomic bomb, a lot of people end up suffering and dying before societies eventually figure out how to handle the new thing and do some good with it.
I'm very much in favor of progress, but I understand the fear. No matter the ultimate benefits, we are the generation that cough up blood as payment for AI/AGI, and it ain't gonna be pleasant.
--
[0] - Assuming they don't kill us first - see AGI.
Were they?
The first thing the printing press did was to break Christianity. It's what made attempts at reforming the Catholic Church finally stick, enabling what we now call Reformation to happen. Reformation forever broke Christianity into pieces, and in the process it started a bunch of religious wars in Europe, as well as tons of neighborly carnage.
> And if we had taken their "lesson", then human society would be in a much worse place.
Was the invention of the printing press a net good for humanity? Most certainly so, looking back from today. Did people living back then knew what they were getting into? Not really. And since their share of the fruits of that invention was mostly bloodshed, job loss, and shattering of the world order they knew, I wouldn't blame them from being pissed off about getting the short end of the stick, and perhaps looking for ways to undo it.
I'm starting to think that talking about inventions as good or bad (or the cop-out, "dual use") is bad framing. Rather, it seems to me that every major invention will eventually turn out beneficial[0], but introducing an invention always first extracts a cost in blood. Be it fire or printing press or atomic bomb, a lot of people end up suffering and dying before societies eventually figure out how to handle the new thing and do some good with it.
I'm very much in favor of progress, but I understand the fear. No matter the ultimate benefits, we are the generation that cough up blood as payment for AI/AGI, and it ain't gonna be pleasant.
--
[0] - Assuming they don't kill us first - see AGI.