when it was first released. I mean, the effectiveness
effectiveness
of generative AI at both understanding
and producing structured language was
cool and unexpected. It was sort of like
when you first saw that that pinch to
zoom feature on an early iPhone. So, it
seemed self-evident to me that, hey,
with enough experimentation, we would
for sure find some impressive
applications for large language models.
And I was curious to learn what they
would be. But then, almost immediately,
the discourse surrounding AI became
cloaked in a mantle of dread and hype. A
few months after chat GBT's launch, for
example, Yuval Harrari, Tristan Harris,
and Ozarasan published an alarming New
York Times op-ed about what the arrival
of this tool foretold. Here's what they
wrote. AI's new mastery of language
means it can now hack and manipulate the
operating system of civilization. By
gaining mastery of language, AI is
seizing the master key to civilization
from bank vaults to holy uh supplicers.
Um later in the article, those authors
predicted by 2028, the US presidential
race might no longer be run by humans.
And then perhaps most notably in their
conclusion, the authors declared, "We
have summoned an alien intelligence."
Now, at the time, I remember that that
seemed out of proportion with how large
language models actually worked. So, a
few weeks later, I responded with a a
long New Yorker piece that I wrote that
was titled, "What kind of mind does chat
GPT have?" and and this led to some
media calming um some fear calming media
interviews. I got to spend some time up
on the hill explaining
autogression to some senators. But
ultimately it was too little too late
because soon after this sort of initial
pop of of dread and fear around AI, the
AI companies themselves
embraced the strategy of trying to
unnerve and scare their own customers. A
month after my New Yorker article, for
example, Open AI CEO Sam Alman signed an
open letter that argued, and I'm quoting
here, the risk of extinction from AI is
on scale with nuclear war. Anthropics
Dario Amade got more specific, claiming
on multiple occasions that there was a
25% chance that our AR future would go
quote really, really badly. He was
referring there to the end of the human
race. The near future wouldn't be any
picnic either. Amade argued on multiple
other occasions that 50% of entry-level
white collar jobs would be automated in
the next 1 to 5 years. Sam Alman agreed
with his general sentiment and helped
fund it out of his own pockets
experiments in universal basic income
because as he explained multiple times,
he was convinced that some sort of
guaranteed income from the government
was the only way that we would have
avoid having to eat our pets once AI
took all of our jobs and cratered the
economy. Last summer, while appearing on
Theo Van's podcast, Alman's voice
cracked as he tried to reckon with the
all powerful technological demons he was
summoning. He compared their work to the
Manhattan project. Earlier this spring,
Anthropic released a report saying that
their new language model, Mythos, was so
good at finding cyber security
vulnerabilities that they couldn't
release it to the public. They gave uh
really anxious briefings to reporters
and world leaders about this new danger.
This led Tom Freriedman, who I think was
at one of those briefings, to dutifully
write a column that called mythos
terrifying. He said in his column, "Holy
cow, super intelligent AI is arriving
faster than anticipated. This is not a
publicity stunt," Freiedman insisted.
Then 6 weeks later, Anthropic threw some
basic guard rails on the model and
released it anyway, so maybe it was a
little bit of a publicity stunt. Then
finally, earlier this month, Anthropic
put out a new report that argued that
the success of their cloud code uh their
cla code uh software development agent
increased the probability that AI may
one day soon start improving itself
until it gets so powerful that humans
can no longer control it. The report
featured a scary animation of robots
multiplying like cells in a petri dish
and many brightly colored charts with
somber captions. They concluded the
report by saying that well there's
nothing they could do about it because
you know China.
All right. All of this type of
fear-mongering has had a massive impact.
Holy numbers show most Americans now
distrust these technologies and think
they're much more likely to cause harm
than good. Essentially, anyone now who
tries to keep up with AI news, even if
they're just sort of casually reading
some headlines, will find themselves
living a life riven with anxiety and
dread. And I'm not exaggerating about
this. I want to read you an excerpt from
an email that I received just last week
from a software developer. Here's what
he told me. I am tired. Every day I hear
that me as a developer will be replaced.
Every day I hear that self-improvement
is right around the corner, that
everything will be bad, wrong. I don't
even know what to believe anymore. These
people ruined my mental health and don't
even know who I am. It just casually
tossing around predictions after
predictions after predictions. I am
afraid my son will be living in some
dystopian world. Reading messages like
this is heartbreaking. It feels like
COVID 19 all over again. But is this all
necessary? Why are companies like
Anthropic and OpenAI simultaneously
trying to terrify us about AI while
sucking up investment dollars and
working to advance the technology as
fast as possible? Why do their CEOs
cosplay as profits
instead of trying to convince us about
the usefulness of their products? Does
any of this make moral sense? Do we have
to put up with this? Well, it's
Thursday, which means it's time for an
AI reality check episode of this show,
which is the perfect opportunity to go
looking for some measured answers to
these questions. Now, as it turns out,
last week, I channeled my frustrations
here into a New York Times op-ed that
called out these companies and declared
their communication strategy, which I've
taken the calling doom trolling, to be
morally indefensible. So, what I want to
do today is I want to get into the
details of my op-ed and then conclude
with some concrete suggestions for those
of you who are fed up with being
relentlessly told by these AI companies
that you have no choice but to shut up
and take your abuse how to push back.
All right, so let's get into it. As
always, I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep
Questions, the show for people seeking
All right. So, I want to start by
reading some passages from my article
itself. I have it here for those who are
watching. Um, the title that we gave it
was, "Dear AI companies, the doom
trolling needs to start." Okay. Uh, stop
rather. Let's start with the
introduction. Here's what I wrote in the
very beginning of the piece. Technology
revolutions in the digital age are
typically accompanied by optimism and
excitement. Recall Steve Jobs basking in
thunderous applause as he introduced the
iPhone in 2007. The major AI companies
seem to be following a darker and
weirder strategy. They like to solemnly
describe the harms that their models
will cause while acting helpless to do
anything about it. I think this is a big
deal, right? This idea that this is new.
We're used to it, but it doesn't mean
that it's normal.
technology leaders used to say, "Let me
tell you why this is cool and why you
should be excited about it." Today,
they're doing something so much darker
and weirder. Okay, returning to my uh
article after I give some examples,
including in particular that last
anthropic report about recursively
self-improvement among their tools, um I
said the following. Like a cat leaving a
dead bird at your doorstep, Anthropic
catalogs the uh the grim future that its
products might produce shrugs it
shoulders and then returns to its
furious efforts to make these warnings a
reality. I then elaborate, let's call
this strategy doom trolling.
It's one of the defining and most
arresting properties of our current AI
moment, and I've come to believe that it
is morally indefensible.
Again, this is a big claim, but I'm
saying once we recognize the weirdness
of this communication strategy where
again like dropping a dead bird at the
board a doorstep, you know, anthropic be
like, "Hey, we might lose control of AI
because of our tools." Carry on. And
then they just walk away and get back to
trying to raise money for their IPO.
It's weird. Let's call it Let's give it
a name. Let's call it doom trolling. And
I say, "This is morally indefensible."
All right. I want to go through here um
carefully my argument for why I think
it's morally indefensible. So here's
what I write. I say there are really
only two options for the intentions of
AI companies when they engage in doom
trolling. The first is that they
actually believe that the systems
they're building have a non-trivial
chance of producing hugely disruptive
events from destroying the economy in
the best case to wiping out our species
in the worst. If this were true,
every reasonable ethical system would
argue that there is uh only one
acceptable response to immediately stop
working on any product that might
accelerate such a future and lobby with
all of your resources to help force
other AI companies to do the same. From
a moral perspective, any other reaction
would be monstrous. All right. So if
they actually do think the technology
they're working on
has even a non-trivial chance of causing
massive societal or even existential
harms, all ethical systems say, "Yeah,
you got to stop and do everything you
can in your power to stop other
companies from doing the same. Forget
your IPO, forget your stock holdings,
forget your money and this this is the
the future of the human race." Of
course, that's what you should be doing.
So for you to say, "Yeah, uh, this might
lead to the extinction of humans, this
trajectory we're on of product
development, but you know, China, and
then getting back to trying to do a 10
mill tr a trillion dollar valuation."
That's morally monstrous. All right,
here's the second option, though. I say
the second option is that these AI
companies aren't really concerned about
these risks and that they're injecting
those doses of unresolvable doom for
other reasons. They might want to
amplify the perceived power of their
technology at a time when they're
setting up their initial public offer
off offerings. Or they hope their
performative reports and somber
interviews will help them compete uh for
more engineering talent coming from a
Silicon Valley culture that's steeped in
this type of dumerism. Denture
capitalist and AI adviser David Sax
recently suggested that anthropic was
using fear-mongering tactics as a method
of regulatory capture
which can impede upstart competitors.
Any of these reasons would mean that
these companies are laundering the
anxiety of millions to improve the
financial fortunes of a vanishingly
small number of major stockholders. This
citizen cynicism would be equally
monstrous. Right? So the second option
is like they don't really believe that
building harnesses on top of fine-tuned
language models is going to lead to the
automation of our economy or the end of
our species. But they still talk about
it like it would. And I say that would
be just as bad because that means you're basically
basically
alchemizing anxiety into money for a
small number of people who have early
stock positions in your company. That's
what it would come down to. That
cynicism cynicism would be equally
monstrous. What do I believe is true? By
the way, I don't know what they think,
but most East Coast computer scientists
who aren't sort of infected by the the
quasi religious esquetology of Silicon
Valley would say no. language models
with harnesses built on top of them
are not a trajectory that's going to uh
exponential up to automation of all jobs
and certainly not to super intelligence
and the death of economy. That's a that
this technology has its uses. They're
more narrow than we think. That's why
we're still stuck mainly doing highly
structured language type things like uh
coding which required years of effort to
get these custom neurosyolic harnesses
to make it useful. Uh it's why it's not
affecting the economy. It's why so many
companies now who invested a bunch in AI
outside of software development are now
moving backwards. And even those who've
invested in AI as software developers
are now having to reduce the token
budgets because they're not getting
enough return on their investment. It's
not magic technology. It's not the chip
from Terminator 2 that allowed the the
sort of the cyborgs to cyborgs to come
alive. That's how I that's what I feel
about it. Now whether the companies
themselves actually maybe wrongly
believe these harms are true or if
they're being cynical, I don't know. But
either option is morally indefensible.
Okay, I want to scroll down. I get into
a lot of details in the article. Read
the whole article for the rest of
details about how we might respond u
society from a government perspective,
from a court's perspective. But I want
to jump down to my conclusion here. I
say as a computer scientist and a
digital ethicist, I'm both optimistic
about the possibilities of AI and confounded
confounded
by the terrifying and grim way that
current technology leaders insist on
talking about it. This could have been a
period of hopeful innovation, but
instead our emotions are being
manipulated by Silicon Valley self-s
serving and morally untenable addiction
to doom trolling. This communication
strategy has to stop. The harms it's
causing to the public's mental health
has arguably outweighed the benefit that
AI has so far delivered.
All right? So, I try to be pretty clear
here. You have to stop.
Treat your products like products.
Explain to us their benefits. Make the
pitch for why the cost is worth it. And
of course, like any other consumer
product company in the history of
consumer product companies, they say,
"No, of course, we're not developing
anything that's going to cause widescale harm.
harm.
We can of course generate very useful
tools based off of large language models
without having to be uh traversing a
trajectory towards the extinction of the
human race. We're fully liable for our products
products
and we're trying to build this going to
help you write code. This is going to
help you do your calendar. Just treat it
like a normal product.
Now, of course, that could be terrifying
because if you look at the actual number
of these companies, they don't justify
anywhere near the giant valuations they
want for the IPOs. Why do they want
those giant valuations? Because they're
in a, you know, a
measuring contest, so to speak, with
Elon Musk. They're like, I want a big
number two show I'm a big man. So, we
might have to just keep terrifying
people so that we seem so important that
we can uh we can ride the hype waves. I
I really am fed up and I really do think
it has to stop. All right, so I put this
article out there last week. Um, you
know, it hit a nerve. It was trending on
uh on X for a while, which I got to say,
by the way, made me quite nervous. The
the trending headline was something like
Cal Newport accuses AI companies of
something something something. And I got
to say, in general, to see your name and
the word accuses um trending on Twitter,
uh, historically speaking is not good.
In this case, it was okay because it was
me doing the accusations. That made me a
little bit uncomfortable, but I'm glad
that the article was getting some
pickup. Steven Pinker retweeted it uh
and demanded that AI companies quote
stop the self-s serving and fatalistic
doom trolling end quote. Ed Zitron
called it quote the best thing I've read
about AI uh in years end quote. David
Saxs, who I talked on the article, got
involved. It became a whole thing. Um
but you know, it got out there. But
here's the question that a lot of people
have asked me since. All right, what
should we as individuals do next? The
article made a lot of calls for what the
company should do. It made calls about
what the court should do. It made calls
about what the government should or
shouldn't do. What should we as
individuals do here? What's the call to
action to the the person who is fed up
with being force-fed anxiety day after
day by these AI companies? Well, here's
the clearest way I can summarize my suggestion.
suggestion.
Stop playing along with the doom
trolling game.
Don't pay attention to any statements
from AI companies that are stated in the
future tense. Care about the products
they offer now and whether those
products are currently worth the time,
investment, and money required to use them.
them.
When you encounter scary news articles
about AI, remember that most journalists
don't have access to some sort of
special information or powers of prognostication.
prognostication.
They're just replaying or relaying the
dark vibes that the AI company leaders
are putting off. So, you don't have to
put special stock in the fact that a
major publication is saying something
scary about AI. It is just a direct
reflection of the doom trolling that the
AI companies themselves are doing. I
want you to remember two things about
the current leaders of these major
frontier AI labs. First, they are
weirder than you think.
I think we all seriously underestimated
the degree to which the quasi religious
x-risk singularity culture in Silicon
Valley has warped the way that many
Silicon Valley leaders think and talk
about human value technology in the
future. This is why I think doom
trolling got a a early foothold,
especially in the media, is that we sort
of rationally assumed, oh, these are the
people who know this technology best, so
if they're concerned, we should be
concerned, too. Now, a few years in,
we're realizing that the person that we trusted
trusted
maybe had a couple screws loose. I It
reminds me of the classic Simpsons
episode where the the the car company
gets convinced that Homer is a genius
and they let him design his own car and
it's a terrible disaster and a flop.
They realize like, oh, maybe maybe uh
our idea that this is the person who
knows best about what someone wants in a
car was wrong. It reminds me of this
sometimes like these guys, these
hardcore serious engineers know what
they're talking about. And then we see
them with their sort of metaphorical
robes on as they're they're doing their
demon summoning dance around the GPU on
top of an altar. Like, uh-oh, maybe we
shouldn't have been so quick to assume
everything they're saying was true. The
second thing I want you to keep in mind
about the leaders of AI companies right
now, this way they've been talking, this
sort of doom drenched uh rhetoric
has been very helpful financially for
them. It makes them seem all powerful
and therefore worthy of uh much more
investment capital than the reality of
their business model which is that they
are essentially a money losing natural
language version of Google uh in
OpenAI's case and a uh a software
development utility developer utility
company in anthropics case that reality
is not worth a trillion dollar valuation
but the reality of we're going to invent
the last tool ever that's going to run
the whole economy there's enough hype
around that you're like I want to write
a check it puts them in that a meme
stock territory that SpaceX benefited
from. So, there's a financial incentive
for the way they talk. Keep that in
mind. All right. I also want you um to
keep the following in mind as well. If
you begin rejecting doom trolling and
show like really any resistance to these
gloomy messages,
people in your life who are drowning in
AI anxiety will begin to use you as a
safety blanket. They will semi-antagonistically
semi-antagonistically
challenge you to explain whenever any
new sort of stupid feature or or
benchmark chart is released why this
doesn't mean that the Terminator robots
are in fact coming. And here's what I
want you to remember once you're in this
situation. It's not your job to disprove
the remarkable claims of the doomers.
It's the doomer's job to convince us
that their remarkable claims are likely.
You do not have to play the safety
blanket for people around you.
It's it's this weird asymmetric
inversion we've had that instead of the
companies having to say why they think
we're going to have, you know, AI ruling
the world, you have to somehow argue why
uh a 10% increase of Fable 5 on the epic
6 benchmark doesn't mean that. It's a
crazy inversion. It's not your job. It's
the doomer's job. Remarkable claims
require remarkable evidence. Finally, I
want you to use the term doom trolling
as much as you can. Words have power. My
greatest hope for this piece is that by
normalizing this new term, by getting it
as a part of our lexicon, it will
effectively undermine or ridicule the
communication strategy of this sort of
like guys, I'm sorry to report, but our
latest product uh it's probably going to
require it's probably going to lead to
uh data centers having to uh devour your
pets for organic energy sources. That's
you know, that's probably going to
happen. Um, anyways, our stock will be
available next week. See you soon.
Right. If it kind of ridicules that, it
makes it harder for them to do. I want
it to be culturally almost impossible
for Anthropic to put out one of these
stupid white papers with animations and
charts where they act all somber like,
"Oh, this tech we're so safety aware."
And then doing no changes at all in
their product offerings or or um uh
research programs. So, let's use that
term. Hey, stop doom trolling and get
back to explaining to me what are you
selling? How much are you making? Does
it justify your valuation? Let's get
back to the real product basics.
All right, that that's probably enough
of me ranting about doom turling. Um,
I'll be back on Monday with an advice
episode of this podcast, uh, which
should be a nice break from all this
doom and gloom. Um, then next Thursday I
may or may not have another AI reality
check. They're going to be a little bit
spottier this summer just because I'm
traveling a lot. So, some weeks I'll
have them, some weeks I won't, but
they're not going away, so never fear.
Um, and of course, you can always
subscribe to my newsletter at
calupport.com or I send a dispatch from
a distracted world every week. [music]
And that'll ensure you're you're getting
at least your daily dose of me trying to
understand our current technological
world and how we can push back and
thrive within it. And remember, until
next time, care about AI, but not
Nhấn vào bất kỳ đoạn văn bản hoặc mốc thời gian nào để nhảy đến phần đó trong video
Chia sẻ:
Hầu hết transcript sẵn sàng trong dưới 5 giây
Sao Chép 1 Chạm125+ Ngôn ngữTìm kiếm nội dungNhảy đến mốc thời gian
Dán URL YouTube
Nhập link bất kỳ video YouTube để lấy toàn bộ transcript
Form Trích Xuất Transcript
Hầu hết transcript sẵn sàng trong dưới 5 giây
Cài Tiện Ích Chrome Của Chúng Tôi
Lấy transcript ngay mà không cần rời khỏi YouTube. Cài tiện ích Chrome để truy cập transcript của bất kỳ video nào ngay trên trang xem, chỉ với một cú nhấp.
Tiện ích Chrome