Those Who Forget History... (Or: the AI Post that LinkedIn "Ate")

Imagine an era where there was rapid technological progress in societies - and that coinciding with this progress also was an increase in disinformation and sensationalistic news. In parallel with this technological progress was the rise of certain corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals.

During said era, questions about how government should ensure these new technologies would benefit the public abounded and there were divides between industry-led approaches vs. those that were regulation centered. This era also saw increasing polarization of both societies and the U.S. Congress - to include deep divisions in the Congress.

Sound familiar?

What if I told you this era was the Gilded Age in the United States which overlapped with the late Victorian Era in Europe.

While history doesn't repeat itself, there definitely are similar efforts of human nature and human dynamics in response to rapid technological progress of the time.

Pragmatic Approaches to How AI Will Impact Us

Nowadays, there is a lot of fear and hype around AI presently. Previously I have attempted to address this, pointing out:

1. AI is a 65+ year old discipline with many different flavors of AI. For anyone making a blanket statement about AI will do __(fill in the blank here)__ = ask them what flavor(s) of AI are they referencing and what data set(s) are they saying have been or would be used to train the AI?
2. Rarely is any technology universally one absolute or another. When the radio came out, pundits in the late 1920s proclaimed it was going to bring nations of the world together - encouraging world leaders to talk regularly with each other and bring about world peace. Fast-forwarding less than seven years later in the early 1930s, pundits were now claiming radio would bring super-empower demagogues and dictators while also bringing about the end of representative societies. So far, almost a century later, radio hasn't resulted in either extreme occurring.

Now, with generative AI - specifically the latest flavor of AI capable of producing text, audio, images, and other multimedia content in response to prompts - we seem to be repeating a lot of the same patterns as earlier history.

This is not to say that generative AI won't have significant impacts (both good and bad), however pragmatism and a longer-view of humanity probably can help us here. Previously I've written about the need for open societies to advance public frameworks around data, sensemaking, and trust .

For our present era, I suggest we need more pragmatic, practical voices across sectors encouraging focus on the things that really matter, to include: how will we update data curation for the future ahead and how will we ensure more people-centered approaches to AI in business, AI in governing, and AI in communities can be advanced ?

We Need to Avoid Fascinations with Fatalism

I should note that this post was "digitally eaten" last week. I wrote an earlier version - now lost to the scrambling of bytes on some cloud server somewhere - on Thursday evening finishing about an hour before midnight. As that wasn't a great time to post, I used LinkedIn's new "Schedule Post" feature for the following morning. Apparently that feature is still having some of the server-side bugs worked out, as the next morning the post double-posted and attempting to remove one of the double-posts deleted both simultaneously, apparently irrecoverable to LinkedIn.

At any rate, the reality that we still have bugs like this to be worked out should suggest the future is going to have some bumps along the way.

That said, nowadays there does seem to be a new fatalism present in our world - specifically a fascination with “doom! XYZ” and more on every topic from climate to bio, nuclear to AI.?Again, the (first?) Gilded Age and late Victoria Era seems to have seen a similar turn of events that human worked its way through, specifically:

(1) During the late 1880s to the early 1900s, there was a fascination with death. In Europe, this coincided with Queen Victoria's very public morning of the loss of her husband where she insisted on wearing mourning wear for the rest of her life. In the U.S., the fascination with death may have been copying Europe's sentiments - combined with the reality that public health at the time was nowhere near ready to deal with the surge of people moving into cities for work. Remember: antibiotics had not been invented yet and sewer systems as well as general running water for public sanitation were advancements still underway. Nowadays it is this fascination with “doom! XYZ” and more on every topic from climate to bio, nuclear to AI.?

Nevertheless, back in the original Gilded Age, the fascination with death did pass. Meanwhile it seems like our own (second?) Gilded Age seems to be borrowing from this same playbook, with doomsday proclamations abound.

Will we need to make some major changes to address climate change? Yes. Will AI disrupt societies? Yes. Will either kill the entire human species - doubtful, as both present time for humans to adapt and respond.

I write this as someone who did thirteen years of counter-bioterrorism and counter-WMD work in some rather challenging environments . Specifically: it's the things that are really fast that are the most dangerous, whereas things that we can see coming sometimes have the double-sided curse of not rallying sufficient responses to proactively prevent them "left of boom" - however once something is happening that can be responded to, then humans can do our best to adapt and mitigate such an adverse set of events.

We Need to Avoid Ascribing Paranormal Powers to Explain Things

(2) During the late 1880s to the early 1900s, there also was a fascination with seances and Ouija boards. Specifically, there was a belief that holding a seance and using a Ouija board could enable the living to communicate with the paranormal spirits of the death. Such events were something reserved for the more well-off and wealthier in society (people we would call privileged nowadays) who would hold seances to communicate with departed relatives, friends, and even spirits of deceased family pets.

Our modern generative AI is impressive in the text, images, audio clips, and other multimedia content that the AI systems can produce. However, lifting the digital lids (metaphorically) about what really is going on here is that impressive crews of computer scientists and data scientists have fed large amounts of data into a collection of algorithms and then proceeded to calibrate - and later permit self-calibration by - the algorithm to optimize the generation of content in response to prompts provided .

At no point are the algorithms conscious or sentient - nor are they presently on the cusp of what some call "Artificial General Intelligence" if such a future accomplishment is indeed possible.

Are they impressive in what they can do? Yes.

Yet we should not fall into the trap of ascribing either human-like traits by anthropomorphizing the machines - or ascribing paranormal-like traits by ascribing some magical "spirit" to the machines.

We Need to Avoid Thinking Society Doesn't Have Tools to Navigate Our Now

(3) Lastly during the late 1880s to the early 1900s, some corporations in both the U.S and Europe attempted to use government regulation to make it difficult for new entrants to enter the railroad industry and disrupt monopolies. This held back societies and ultimately progress to the benefit of industry and societies were achieved when it was recognized that no person, community, or business is an island - and that a broader market and social ecosystem thrives on collaborations across organizations and sectors.

During the late 1800s as well - specifically in 1899 - the nations of Europe got together and essentially all agreed “chemical weapons are very bad” and banned them in theory. Yet a year later they were all quietly pursuing them covertly, such that when WWI broke out - in the first year, despite having banned chemical weapons - both the Central and Allied powers used them against each other in war.?

I've written about this before, raising concerns that "learned helplessness" in society holds us back from each individually doing what we can as positive #ChangeAgents. I also have suggested that a call for an "AI pause" - however well-intended - probably will not work . Moreover, a call for a pause misses the current fragmentation of both collaboration on the global stage among nations - let alone companies - and the need to recognize that we may see new forms of human collaborations beyond the ones we saw in the 20th century arise.

Ultimately, We Need Hope in Our Turbulent Times

This is my 90th LinkedIn post (assuming it does not get eaten by the machine a second time - we'll see). Since I started eight years ago, my focus has been to be practical both to the challenges in our world (including those presented by human nature) and hopeful.

Optimists are the ones with the courage to make a positive difference wherever, whenever the can.

This is not to be starry-eyed or naive, rather emphasize informed practicality. I've seen the challenges of tech and data impacting our world, nations, governments, businesses, and societies - and I've stared into the darker places of human nature both collectively and individual. We humans do lots of beautiful things with and for each other - and, sadly, we also hurt each other. There also are lots of things in-between and mundane things too (like sharing tons of cat videos).

Mostly, it is my *hope* that in outlining how there are similar parallels between the original Gilded Age/late Victorian Era - and our present - that I produced (1) a laugh or two, and (2) ideally a sense of hope that we can get through the fear, uncertainty, doubt, hype, and storm clouds on the horizon .

The Victorian Era also was an era in which signaling of virtues and beliefs was high – versus steadfastly living said virtues and beliefs in private (which mirrors some of our modern social media, where a thumbs up or thumbs down appears more weighty than private action working towards some activity or goal). There were factions, classes, and divides back then and the way one to ensure their solidarity was to signal beliefs to said tribe.

However, such signaling missed that we humans are multidimensional in our character, thoughts, beliefs, and actions. Such signaling also meant folks were quiet about things that - had they spoken up on - they could have found were ideas and beliefs shared by others. There also were plenty of injustices back then, like our now, that went uncorrected for a very long time and impacted lots of people.

We can do better.

I'd submit that yes, we can use the long-view of human history - and whatever digital advancements we have let out of the proverbial bottle - to shine a collective light on both the depth of our humanity and our interconnectedness as communities, as a species, and as a planet together.

From these lights that we each can shine, then yes, we can move forward with practical, pragmatic optimism together.

As always - comments and feedback welcome - and fortune, most certainly, favors communities working together to be bold, brave, and benevolent together.