Sam Altman And Society's AI Brink

It's not quite so drastic just yet, but we're getting there.

Where are we at with AI and what’s going to happen? Let’s dive in for a second or two.

To those annoyed by volume of email: Delete them. Complaining about email volume is the greatest sign of privilege in the western world short of a country club membership (the non-junior version, of course).

To those who like some of what I write: Feel free to toss me a whopping $7/month to afford fancy dog food and periodic brie cheese.

To those who couldn’t care less about AI: No worries, this post has stuff about dotty old politicians, addiction, tech billionaires, and the lies we tell ourselves.

To those who are just hoping Thanksgiving this year isn’t a clusterf*ck: I can’t solve all your problems, Dan. Hide in the bathroom with a crown and down.

Seems like we’ve had our collective heads in the sand about automation for about 20+ years, even though it’s been coming for parts of the American Midwest for longer than that — and that’s a huge part of why Trump won in 2016, actually. It’s a perfect storm for automation to sweep in right now, because:

• We’re still rassling with the “what is work?” repercussions of COVID.

• The legislative branch is meaningless.

• Big money doesn’t tend to care about workers.

• It’s easy to sell the narrative.

More on these in a second. For now, understand that the main guy behind OpenAI is Sam Altman, formerly of Y Combinator, who helps do a good job explaining why bosses are meaningless here.

So that’s a fun first question: if bosses are indeed meaningless and inspire so much hate, how’s about we automate them out first? Ha!

Here’s Rebecca Jarvis of ABC News talking to Altman, in which he comes off as a slightly-more-adept Mark Zuck:

Alright, so let’s go through some of this right now.

What does our automated future look like?