a day ago
AGI Denialist: Rise of a denialist who indicates that we are becoming humanity-denialists
A nomad interested in twisting the kaleidoscope of science and looking for new patterns
As I often write blogs where I audaciously refer to the illusory beast called Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), I get to meet a lot of disgruntled humans, and I now sense an opportunity here to go down in the history by being the first to classify them and list their key morphological features!
We already have one set of humans similarly named, i.e., Climate Change Denialists (and I am often on their side), so I just propose an extrapolation of the same and offer you a guide to identify this new group, AGI Denialists (AGID), and here is a guide to recognise them.
AGID, like all other human groups come in a spectrum from mild to rabid but have certain common morphological features directly or inversely proportional to the intensity of denial they will express.
My observation suggests that the scale of denial is most directly linked with age, i.e., older the more intense.
The second most powerful force is the vocation and level of success, with two groups having very distinct presence amongst the denialists, i.e., the artists and the non-engineering professionals.
If the person is an artist, regardless of the level, denialism is almost always on the highest scale, while in non-engineering professional such as a doctor or a lawyer, the scale of denial will be directly proportional to the level of success.
And, last but not the least is exposure to AI, as this has a very curious effect that often produces the most rabid variety, and it is a bit counterintuitive to understand.
If I convert my classification into a typical case of rabid AGID, it will be a middle-aged male with high level of professional = social success and, most interestingly, he will have used AI, i.e., the narrow artificial intelligence and hence 'he knows'.
Though artist group also produces rabidity of a fine order, the above-cited is always in the other league. Most of the artists give up arguing and give you a hurt look of 'you-won't-understand' but the above-cited will carry on arguing with you till the you admit your defeat.
If we look at the overall response to the AI and AGI debate, we have three sets of responses, i.e., ignore, accept or deny. The ignore group is the largest, closely followed by the denier and on the fringe we have some of us who accept that AGI is here and here to stay.
If you are a human reader of the above 435 words, armed with human intelligence and on the verge of boredom, you are now bound to ask , 'So What?'. And that is really the main reason why I am writing this piece.
As I have already stated in my previous piece on AGI, human response to the rise of AGI is very much like how we respond to an impending doom of a very special nature. Such a response is reserved for threats that we know that we cannot mitigate (eg. diagnosis of an incurable and fatal disease).
The fact that AGI is getting responded-thus means that deep within the collective psyche, we are recognising it as a threat, and the one that is uncontrollable.
The rising presence of denialists is a clear indicator that we are all fearing the rise of AGI and need to find a psychological closure. The variation in response is nothing but a product of the psychological bent of mind each of us have.
Be it ignoring, accepting or denying, all three options are imaginary narratives we all have built because we have a collective realisation that we humans have no control over how AGI will evolve.
I don't know how much of this fear borne from watching sci-fi movies, but my own guess is that we humans have a accepted deep within that the brave new world has no moral compass other than profiteering. This clearly indicates that we have lost faith on individual morality to prevail upon boundless selfishness.
We now live in a world where we can easily believe that for a few billion dollars of profit, a human CEO of company can and will make a vaccine that can harm billions of humans. And what is even more tragic is that we also believe that we have no way to counter this phenomenon other than fabricating a comfortable narrative to find our own peace.
If we look real close, the presence of not just AGID but all types of denialists is indicator of something really deep.
While AGI or climate change will have a range of people with different opinions, there is one collective denial that has arrived and settled like a dark cloud.
We all are now Humanity/Morality-Denialists.
We have lost faith in our own values and have given up against the market forces. We have started believing that human civilisation is a rudder-less ship and we have no hope to find the rudder.
It is this denialism that is bigger than any that humanity has ever confronted in the history, and if we don't counter it, we are a doom race.
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Views expressed above are the author's own.
