In the current landscape of technology hype, technological immodesty underpins everything. Hype trumps everything else, meaning systems can’t be just good at one thing. They need to be good at everything. Systems can’t just be capable. They need to be superintelligent. Once this happens, imagine all of the amazing things they’ll do! We don’t have an intelligence explosion, but we do have an immodesty explosion.
It’s the lack of modesty that compels speculation on topics such as artificial superintelligence before we’ve even achieved AGI. But speculating on artificial superintelligence makes you an ASS, an Artificial Super Speculator. Speaking of asses, people like Ray Kurzweil cloak themselves in immodesty and disregard for reality when they talk about computronium, nanotechnology, or wanting to convert the entire universe into a giant supercomputer. But immodesty has consequences beyond people making asses of themselves.
Technological Immodesty
Technological modesty was introduced in Paul Goodman’s 1969 article Can Technology Be Humane? In the article, Goodman describes technological modesty.
Currently, perhaps the chief moral criterion of a philosophic technology is modesty, having a sense of the whole and not obtruding more than a particular function warrants.Okay, that’s incredibly academic. In a more common vernacular, what he’s saying is, don’t claim shit can do things it can’t. This is best illustrated with an example. This example comes from the 1992 book Technopoly by Neil Postman.
Norbert Wiener remarked that, if digital computers had been in common use before the atomic bomb was invented, people would have said that the bomb could not have been invented without computers.I hope this example prompts some reflection. We can’t fathom how ancient humans were able to accomplish things without modern technology. We look at the stones of Puma Punku or the pyramids at Giza and assign a higher likelihood to aliens than to human ingenuity. No offense to Giorgio Tsoukalos. We struggle to imagine a time before our current technologies existed, which is why we often can’t view the past without peering through the eyepiece of the present.
Immodesty isn’t a modern construction, but we’ve supercharged it, adding nitrous oxide and flames shooting out the tailpipes. This is made easier with the arrival of more advanced technology that many don’t understand. And when tech leaders are in public, they can’t help but flaunt it. Here’s a recent example.
So, robots won’t merely eliminate poverty, they’ll make everyone wealthy? Exactly how is that supposed to work? It’s nonsensical performance art, something I’ve written about before. In short, being modest or even realistic, for that matter, doesn’t pay the bills. So, all aboard the hype train.
The number of times I’ve seen and heard the technology and magic quote from Arthur C. Clarke is mind-boggling. People wield this phrase like a weapon, as though it’s evidence for some wildly speculative technology. As a refresher, or for anyone who’s never heard it, here is the quote: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” When people quote this phrase, they mean it as proof of the inversion.
When pointing out this inversion, Colin Fraser summed up what people actually mean when they utter Clarke’s phrase: ”Anything indistinguishable from magic can be achieved with sufficiently advanced technology.” This simple inversion is what many of us have been pushing back against for the past few years. This is the pinnacle of technological immodesty, the golden cap atop the polished limestone pyramid.
What’s The Problem?
On the surface, this seems irritating and not problematic. It just seems like the hype boys be hypin’. This is true in some cases. However, there are real-world impacts. Most importantly, it means we won’t address today’s problems since magic fairy dust is coming to solve our woes. You can see this play out when you hear someone like Eric Schmidt saying we should go “all in” on data centers because we aren’t going to meet our climate goals anyway. AI is just going to “figure it out.” Oh yes, More data centers, please!!! Notice the hype of his referring to AI as “alien intelligence?”
The entire gambit runs from the benign to the absurd and everything in between. For example, when the technology to eradicate mosquitoes surfaces, people in the e/acc community are all for it.
That’s right. This dunce cap doesn’t understand the ethical concerns for wiping out an entire species. Even the discussion on the post is stupid. The ethical concerns aren’t for the “suffering” of the mosquitoes. The problem centers on the consequences of eliminating an entire species from the planet. They view an entire species as an affliction like Polio or ALS, which makes the thought experiment of wiping them out a simple binary. You know, the little things. I loathe the e/acc community for making me defend mosquitoes.
In another example, Elon Musk wants to block out the sun with satellites. Yup, I’m sure nothing bad would come of that. I believe it was Dienekes who, when informed that satellites would block out the sun, responded, “Then we’ll TikTok in the shade!”
Dario Amodei claims technology (his technology) will cure cancer and double our lifespan in just a few years. At some point, technology will allow us to eradicate cancer and possibly double our lifespan. Side note: Doubling our lifespan isn’t exactly the benefit it seems to be if we can’t address cognitive decline. Statements like these exploit our intuitions about technological capabilities. By adding the word “soon,” he creates an air of believability, hyping his own technology in hopes of attracting further investment. Let’s not forget that none of his predictions have come true. This is like spraying a pile of manure with perfume and claiming that it never smelled.
Not to be outdone in speculative bullshit, Ray Kurzweil wants to pave over the entire universe, converting its atoms into computronium to build even larger supercomputers. Cool huh? This is nothing more than speculative tech bro porn. This is a lack of modesty on a cosmic scale.
Even if this were possible, what gives us the right to wipe out entire planets? You know all of those sci-fi superhero movies where the heroes of Earth need to defend against the massive dark force threatening to destroy us? Kurzweil wants us to create that dark force to nom nom entire planets and belch out compute. Sorry, you’re going to die, folks, but think of all the compute we’ll have!
There are countless examples like these that go far beyond mere product overhyping. So, you might wonder why people say shit like this. Well, it’s for a few reasons. Either their paycheck depends on it, they enjoy a public performance, or they want to sound smarter than everyone else. Take your pick. There’s an old saying: never trust a prediction when a person’s paycheck depends on it being correct. Sage advice.
One of the biggest problems that arises from a lack of technological modesty is the devaluation of both humans and nature. What is the worth of a single human or even an entire planet in the face of an intergalactic nom nom machine? Even on a smaller scale, we see people who want to replace other people with technology. AI coworkers, AI friends, AI art, and the list goes on and on. In another inversion, instead of us using technology, technology uses us.
We allow people wielding tech like a magic wand to trivialize and devalue everything that makes humanity unique. And for what? The benefits are supposedly implied, but the details are never specified.
We Are Bad At Imagining The Future
Take a moment to reflect on the fact that most of the AI predictions you’ve heard over the past few years have not only been wrong, but completely absurd. Nearly all of them. Absurd predictions fuel hype, which the press picks up, which in turn fuels more absurd predictions. We don’t reward people for being right; we reward them for being bold.
Humans are also bad at imagining the future. By most accounts, we should have flying cars and hoverboards by now. But risks of the past seem quaint by today’s standards. In a complex world, it’s hard to imagine how situations will change and adapt, especially when technology solves problems.
Harry Harrison’s 1966 novel about overpopulation and scarce resources, called Make Room! Make Room!, contains a shocking statement at the end of the book intended to invoke fear.
CENSUS SAYS THE UNITED STATES HAD BIGGEST YEAR EVER END OF CENTURY
344 MILLION CITIZENS IN THESE GREAT UNITED STATES
HAPPY NEW CENTURY!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
This statement may have invoked fear in 1966, but today it looks quaint. We are roughly there population-wise already, and people eat soybeans and lentils because they want to, not because they have to. We aren’t in the Make Room! Make Room! scenario because of advances in technology, agriculture, and trade.
Yeah, yeah. I know, spoiler alert. The book came out in 1966. If you haven’t read it yet, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Not only is overpopulation not a problem, but some are warning that population collapse is the problem, and we need to increase the population, something Elon Musk has taken it upon himself to address personally. The real world is a complex place, filled with unforeseen problems and solutions. It’s just not possible to speculate very far into the future, yet that’s what we are all being prodded to do.
My site focuses on technology risks, so this is what I highlight. The benefits of technology are far-reaching, and this is important to keep in mind as we identify potential risks. It’s because of technology that we can live longer and that the planet can support its population. Even technologies that carry risks can be evaluated in terms of trade-offs. The problems I call attention to are people wielding speculative technologies like a magic wand, casting imaginings far and wide.
When it comes to problems caused by technology, we are told not to fret because a solution is on the way. We are told that any problem created by technology can be solved by applying even more technology. But this technology layering distracts from the root cause of the underlying issues, and of course, creates even more issues. The original problem lies at the center of an onion wrapped in petals, creating more problems. Or in some cases, there was no problem at all.
In other cases, solving technology problems with more technology may very well be true. However, there are many situations in which this doesn’t make sense. For example, we aren’t going to solve the loneliness epidemic with AI friends. Many people have a technology-shaped hole at the center of their being that won’t be solved with more technology.
Injecting Reality Into Technological Immodesty
Unfortunately, there isn’t much we, as individuals, can do on a large scale to address this, except roll our eyes. We must remain robust against the influence of speculative bullshit. Some of us need to stay grounded in reality and able to identify future risks without being thrashed about by the tornado of irrationality and hype. Hype creates fear, and fear can be weaponized.
On a smaller scale, in our conversations, when someone brings up something like nanobots, computronium, wiping out species, the need for humans to leave Earth for our survival, how AI or robots will end poverty and create a utopia, or any of the countless other examples of speculative bullshit, ask these people two simple questions. Why do you think that? How will that work? Make people explain their position. You’ll typically find they either have no clue or are talking about magic instead of technology.
When you inject a bit of reality into the conversation, and someone claims, “But you aren’t Ray Kurzweil!” Simply respond with, “Thankfully!” Modesty is born from the recognition of reality, and reality has been in short supply lately and will be for quite some time.
Technology is all about tradeoffs. Ask people what they believe the tradeoffs are. It’s incredibly rare to get something for nothing, or even cheaply, for that matter. A vast majority of the time, people haven’t considered any tradeoffs or are blind to their existence.
Conclusion
Technology has and will continue to improve human lives. It’s because technology has successes that it’s so easy for people to speculate about future technology. I’m hopeful that technological advances allow us to find cures for afflictions like cancer and Alzheimer’s and overall make people’s lives better. These would be major accomplishments. Also, indoor plumbing kinda rules.
I’m not making the case for a regression to some previous era. What I’m saying is, we shouldn’t let people talk about technology as though it’s magic. This environment not only causes massive harm but also allows charlatans and hucksters to run rampant. Unfortunately, we have a lot of work ahead.