Restacking: Five Reads on the Idolization of Technology
Back in 2015, something curious happened.
More and more, my calendar started getting filled up with tech and founder meetups – and I spent my evenings traveling across London to dip into the new world of tech and venture building. What I didn’t know at the time was that I was (unconsciously) beginning to shift my career.
What I found at these events was a religious, almost reverent, belief that tech was going to fix the world, or at least, dominate it.
When I suggested at a talk on the Internet of Things (IoT) that we might be reaching a saturation point of too much technology, I was patted on the back and told, ‘Oh Alberto. We’re just getting started. One day, your fridge will shop for you.’
Now. I don’t know about you, but my fridge does not shop for me. Sometimes, I really wish it did. Or maybe not.
Nowadays, it seems that the executives of tech companies are intentionally choosing to send their children to tech-free schools while simultaneously worshipping at the altar of data, bits, and silicon chips. Coaches and productivity gurus’ advice focuses on turning all notifications off, deleting email and Slack on phones, and staying in airplane mode. Is tech avoidance now becoming a luxury?
Upon these reflections, I want to share some interesting readings I have come across lately. Below are some articles that I’ve found helpful to expand on this idealization.
Artificial General Intelligence is Nigh! Rejoice! Be very afraid!
This article discusses the cyclical return of overrating new technology, only to undervalue it as time goes on. As Mark Twain says, “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
This piece also underlines the idea that if we view the ‘Other’ as a machine (non-human) rather than a person, we will treat it as such — i.e., often without respect or dignity. And because of the widespread culture that accepts this behavior, such treatment becomes easily legitimized.
https://ea.rna.nl/2023/11/26/artificial-general-intelligence-is-nigh-rejoice-be-very-afraid/
Present Shock
As you’ll know if you read my previous SubStack, I highly recommend Erik Larson for his newsletter, Colligo.
To the point raised above on the apparent constant of human nature when met against change, Larson reinforces this.
It was as if humanity wanted to find and nurture the best of itself, so discovery of the greats of the classic Roman Greek world and innovating for the future joined forces. But our culture today seems unconcerned and even dismissive about humans and their potential.
Studying the past isn’t some valiant pursuit. Studying ourselves in a positive light seems like signing on to study silly error-prone organisms with bias. What a drag. This sort of self-flagellation would make little sense in a healthy humanistic world, but our modern obsession with the possibility of truly smart machinery keeps a self-important anti-humanism alive and kicking.
Theories of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and cult behaviour
Here we have three articles that explore AGI and the cult-like behavior of tech bros – think Silicon Valley combined with the “fractious religious-political disputation of early Christianity” (Read).
The interested normie’s guide to OpenAI drama
First up, this article by Max Read highlights how the tech bro culture is its own kind of cult, and draws out the humor in the drama that ensued when OpenAI’s founder and CEO, Sam Altman, was fired. It was a move that sent shockwaves through the AI influencer community.
What Max emphasizes is that OpenAI “has never (and may never!) run a profit; that it is one of many AI companies working on fundamentally similar technologies; that the transformative possibilities of these technologies (and the likely future growth and importance of OpenAI) is as-yet unrealized, tests on a series of a untested assumptions, and should be treated with skepticism.”
Despite Sam Altman, “nice guy though he may be, [having] never demonstrated a particular talent or vision for running a sustainable business,” Altman has emerged as a figurehead with a fanbase outside of the venture capital world.
As Ravit Dotan, the founder and CEO of TechBetter, says in her recent LinkedIn post – Meet the Church of the Way of the Future (WOTF). This is an actual organization based in Silicon Valley that filed for religious status with the US IRS and formed a non-profit. It is focused on “the realization, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), developed through computer hardware and software”.
Yes, really.
What OpenAI shares with Scientology
Continuing on this note, and actually starting again with the ousting of Sam Altman as CEO, this article explores some of the rumors that circulated after his fall. Some pointed to two of the board members who have ties to the Rationalist and Effective Altruist movements – a community that is “deeply concerned that AI could one day destroy humanity.”
This links back to one of the messages in ‘The Interested Normie’s Guide to OpenAI’ that Max Read alludes to; there were concerns that safety was not being taken seriously enough, or being integrated into OpenAI’s mission, in favor of rapid commercialization.
The author, Henry Farrell, continues to expand on the crucial differences between today’s AI cult, and golden age Scientology – particularly on this idea that capitalism and Scientology reinforce each other.
“In AI, in contrast, God and Money have a rather more tentative relationship.”
Summary
All that’s to be said – while cults may look ridiculous from the outside in, just as religions may feel bizarre to atheists – they indicate an implicit human attraction towards transcendence, the (I think, reasonable) recognition of something more to life that meets the human eye. The most profound meaning of things, of everyday action, universality, human nature, and ‘Why’ questions are all ways that we better make sense of our reality.
Our pursuit to ask questions of the deeper whys is one of the ways that makes humans so unique – and so beautiful.
But we always have to critically analyze the answers.
If you haven’t already, I’d love for you to read my book and let me know what you think. It’s a short read. The fastest reader told me he read it and enjoyed it very much in one week!