Why is everyone in such a goddamned hurry?
While there are things we need to hurry up and deal with – climate change and fascism spring to mind – the efforts to address both those areas seem to be plodding along. Meanwhile, the broligarchs are trumpeting what they’re calling AI and claiming that their concept of the future – one built on bad reading of “Golden Age” science fiction – is just a few years away.
Their ideas range from living on Mars in the next five (ten? twenty? thirty?) years to destroying the Earth so we can live throughout the Universe by the trillions, which I assume they think will happen in their lifetimes, though perhaps only if the singularity happens or some other form of immortality comes along to give them (but probably not the rest of us) infinite time.
It’s easy to poke holes in their lack of knowledge of any area except computer programming (and maybe even that). Even their physics seems wonky and as for their biology – well, let’s be real: we humans evolved on and with this planet. There is no place else in the Universe where we will fit as well. Destroying the Earth is taking away our perfect home.
It may be possible for us to live on other planets or in orbiting satellites, but there are a lot of challenges to that, challenges rooted in our biology and in physics in general, not to mention in the fact that we really know so damn little. There’s so much more we need to understand before we set out to colonize the universe, perhaps starting with whether we should be colonizing anything at all.
I wrote a novel about that: The Weave, which is about humans finding a habitable planet with an asteroid belt chock full of useful elements, a planet that turns out to be inhabited by intelligent beings who do not have human levels of technology, but have something else. I was thinking about the conquistadors in the Americas when I wrote it – the working title was Seven Cities of Gold and there are names and jokes on that theme throughout.
It is science fiction, meaning it is a thought experiment about how humans should approach meeting other intelligent beings, especially given some of the disasters in our history of meeting each other here on Earth. I’ll just note that the Earth I imagined was not destroyed to make this exploration possible, though it was far from a perfect society.
Biology. Physics. Ethics. Just a few of the things we have to consider as we explore beyond our planet or, for that matter, build future systems here on Earth.
There’s no need to be in a hurry about space exploration.
We have a perfectly good planet to live on – even with the challenges presented by our lack of attention to climate change – and, in fact, we could and should spend a lot of time and effort making sure we keep it livable for all and improve the infrastructure that makes a good modern life possible without destroying the core systems that make any kind of life possible.
It would make sense to get a properly balanced system working on Earth before we try to live anywhere else, because by doing that we’d figure out exactly what is necessary.
So what’s the hurry? What’s even the hurry for developing artificial intelligence? Right now we don’t even understand human intelligence – or, for that matter, any kind of animal intelligence. I strongly suspect we can’t develop real artificial intelligence without understanding the way consciousness and sentience and sapience all came about in the first place, which is part of the reason people who know a lot about computers but nothing about biology (never mind ethics) are not the people who should be leading us into the future.
One thing I’ve noticed with the current rush to promote AI (even though the large language models that underlie what’s being marketed as AI are only useful for certain kinds of things) is that unlike earlier fast-moving technological change, there is very detailed and effective negative criticism of what’s going on.
In the late 1990s, when Google developed a search engine that worked so well it became a verb, the main criticism of tech was “that’s cool, but how do you make money with that?” There were good discussions of privacy and security and unfair use issues, but outside of those who just harrumphed and held onto their typewriters and landlines, there was no deep criticism that implied the internet and good search were not useful things to be cultivated.
This is not true of AI, which is being roundly attacked by very smart people, including a number who love computers and technology and the internet and know a lot about the subject.
Unfortunately, way too many people and organizations – including, god help us all, universities – are buying into the “AI is the future, so don’t get left behind” message.
I’m pretty sure that the future is still going to be there if we don’t grab onto the latest over-hyped tech.
Assuming, of course, we deal more effectively with climate change and kick out the fascists.
I could wish that so many of the people with significant money and ambition weren’t so driven by the “cool” factor. I think for some of them the argument goes: Sure, we could pour time, money, and energy into fixing the planet we =have=. But is that as cool as rocking a spacesuit out on an another planet?
I think the exploration of space is exceptionally cool (provided we manage not to replicate the sins and errors of past human exploration, like, say, colonialism). But to do it well and thoughtfully takes time, and during that time we should be making sure the planet we’re on continues to be a hospitable home for the vast numbers of people who won’t, can’t or don’t want to shuffle off to another world.
I also suspect that a lot of the people who imagine themselves bravely forging a trail into space don’t want to actually do the hard work .Get me there, get me there safely, make sure there’s an espresso machine–preferably AI operated so I don;’t have to deal with a human barista. Frontier living is glamorous for a weekend. For a lifetime it’s something resembling hard work.
I, too, think space exploration is cool. I mean, as I always say, I went to church with NASA’s Mission Control! Despite being very prone to airsickness and therefore not suited for spaceship travel, I’d really like to visit the Moon or orbit the Earth. It’s fascinating.
But there’s no reason to rush out there ahead of our understanding of the Solar System, much less anything farther away. There’s no hurry for humans to live in space, but there is a hurry to make sure we keep the planet livable.
And you’re dead on about frontier living. I come from people who did precisely that — a fraught history if you look at the indigenous rights that got trampled on in the process — and I’m pretty sure those great-great grandmothers and grandfathers were much hardier than I.