Standing on one leg
Tags: ai, tech, arts
Published: 2023-03-30 07:03:09

---
title: Standing on one leg
published: true
description: Pushing for ever new products and breakthroughs in the area of tech can make much money, give power and ultimately lead to dangerous imbalance. We need to catch up on the artistic side, to better understand the tech we develop and their implications on our societies and finally our own lives.
tags: AI, tech, arts
cover_image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/%22The_School_of_Athens%22_by_Raffaello_Sanzio_da_Urbino.jpg/1280px-%22The_School_of_Athens%22_by_Raffaello_Sanzio_da_Urbino.jpg?uselang=de
# Use a ratio of 100:42 for best results.
# published_at: 2023-03-30 06:42 +0000
---

[Joe Mainwaring wrote a short article](https://dev.to/theaccordance/should-ai-development-beyond-gpt-4-should-be-paused-5fmb) on the open letter of people like Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and others on pausing development of AI beyond the state of GPT-4.

I first thought to write a comment but I rather make it a new article to increase visibility and debate reach. So here we go:

I find it interesting that people like Musk and Woz are calling on a pause on a technology their own companies are not leading in (IIRC Musk dropped out of openAI and Apple has not to my knowledge pronounced they had anything likely in the pipe).
So they *might* be influenced here also by the hopes to catch up.
Now let's guess: Given the condition of child miners for elements needed in the battery industry, do you think Musk would slow down Tesla? Or would Apple slow down in developing iPhones until say China would care more about their working class?

But yes, there are dangers, and dangers we will have to face. But we also need to evaluate: Who will follow such a call to slow down? Other big tech firms from the Silicon Valley? What about Chinese firms? Will they put down the opportunity to catch up and maybe go into lead? Doubtful. And while there is much to be criticised about how AI can lead to power concentration in the hands of some few people in Silicon Valley, in dictatorships like China the power is already kinda centralised and them getting more power through AI sounds like a greater nightmare to me. Just look at the infowar around the Ukraine war and how Russia has been trying to split western democracies without much AI, and how successful they've been.

But I am afraid slowing down anything will not help. At least those companies that lead here are in countries that have - with all legitimate criticism and all their imperfections - still rather well working freedoms and democracy implemented. So "we the people" have somehow the chance to influence what is going to happen and what not. This might change though.

This is why we need to - in my opinion - not slow down development in AI, but speed up development on the interpretation and understanding front.

Philosophy, sociology, pedagogics, psychology etc or in short terms "the arts" need to get ahead of IT, which is kinda hard because IT is where the money is.
Musk just kicked out a lot of people who would deal with community management, saying they wouldn't actually work (I'm oversimplifying here, but I hope you gt the point).

Social Media swapped over us without us having a chance to evaluate in time how to properly deal with it, cope with it, adjust to this new reality being part of our lives, and it has had an enormous impact - for good AND bad.

AI might be powerful enough to wreck us at one point. So let us speed up development in the arts so we can find out how to deal with it in a way that reduces the harm it can cause.