The Doom And Hype AI Cycle
I don’t know a ton about AI and automation, except it does seem like the absolute wrong time to be introducing this stuff at-scale, given that most people are living paycheck-to-paycheck and worried about their jobs and groceries. The tech titans will always claim “aggregate job creation!” and “hyper-charge human existence!” but not everyone will feel that. A lot of people have their income, their pension/retirement, some investments, and their house — and that’s it. And a lot of people don’t have that. If you want to understand the rise of Trump or general nationalism or anything else, consider job losses, addiction, “despair,” etc. When you feel like you’ve got nothing and the system is screwing you royally, you will listen to literally anyone who is preaching a return to something you understand.
That’s a long intro into this profile of James Manyika, who is the Google AI dude these days. I believe his title is “Head Of Tech And Society.” Wow.
cc: James Manyika
Manyika has all the bonafides of a tech bro, minus his race (he’s African-American). He grew up in Africa, went to 英国牛津大学 , and has been in Silicon Valley for years — minus a stay in the Obama administration, which we’ll address in one second. Throughout that article, he’s regularly referred to as one of the most well-connected guys in Silicon Valley (high praise) and a big connector in the automation space.
At the same time, he has criticisms from people claiming his work on “responsible AI” for Google is fake, including this lady from a company called Data & Society.
“Big tech companies are calling for regulation,” Kneese said. “But at the same time, they are quickly shipping products with little to no oversight.”
That’s the harsh reality of existence right now. People need to make money and get their nut. AI is the next big thing. There’s memes and jokes now that if you put AI in a pitch deck, your number goes up and to the right. I’m not really in San Francisco area pitch meetings that often, but I would imagine that is accurate. So, Google needs to ship and sell. It needs to have revenue from things other than search (it’s needed that for 16 years). ChatGPT arrived first, so they scrambled to get Bard live. While I believe a lot of people now use Bard, it’s also plagued by inaccuracy (as is, of course, ChatGPT).
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Said post involves the phrase “bold and responsible,” which apparently they use with governmental figures, investors, and employees. I would assume within that phrase, “bold” means “make a lot of money quickly” and “responsible” means “do it in a way where the PR isn’t awful.” I think I’m right on that.
What is troubling, though, is that when Manyika worked in the Obama admin, he helped produce a 2016 report in concert with the Commerce Department claiming that AI would displace millions of jobs.
Now he’s at one of the biggest tech companies in the world, which is working on a suite of tech that can easily replace lots of white-collar jobs, and it’s almost like a weird circle: he knows what could happen, but he has to balance “what could” (the doom) with “what the overlords of tech want” (the hype). It’s a tough line to walk, I’m sure.
I still think it’s possible in the long-term aggregate that AI creates more jobs than it destroys. I have some hope therein! The problem right this moment, especially post-COVID, is that a lot of people seem greedier and more scared by the possibility that the government will rush in and shut down their ability to make money overnight. So they’re trying to get theirs now, and how. That’s a dangerous place for these tools to scale within, because even if you put aside the capacity for misinformation, you’re still left with a bunch of greedy guys seeing this as a “cost containment” play, and all that does is reduce the tax base, scale addiction, balloon the social safety net needs, etc. A lot of America is already racked by poverty. Reducing jobs in the short-term, as the cost of groceries rises every quarter, isn’t going to help that.
We’re on this weird train between doom (pandemic-level suffering, job loss, robots treating us like house pets) and hype (we can all work 12 hours/week and learn to play the violin as our life is handled for us by omnipresent tech), and I’m not sure which reality is more potent. The truth of the matter is that life will probably persist for many as it has, with gradual job loss and more and more white-collar roles going to tech + lower-cost human to check the work of the tech. In all honesty, we were probably headed that way anyway, since a lot of white-collar jobs are utter bullshit and don’t even need to exist.
I’m not sure where we land, but this seems like one of the biggest societal stories of the next 20–30 years. Your take?