A former art professor of mine once said:
I enjoy the taste of fish but I don't want to reek of it.
He said this about art students and art. For those unfamiliar with liberal arts education, he was politely saying that he enjoys art but not the overzealous, often obnoxious, culture and identity-building accompanying late teen and early twenty-something year-old art education.
As a moral principle, there should be a proportionality to ideas. Not only that but also a proportionality to the culture and epistemological boxes birthed by those ideas. This is a lesson about moderation.
AI is the most recent hype craze because AI is amazing. But is the hype proportionate to the "amazingness?" Maybe but maybe not. The stock market seems to think so. I don't have a crystal ball, nor valid heuristics to assess the likelihood that more progress can be made in this field of AI research. However, I have a very strong intuition that every C-level executive has had one idea for the past two years. That idea has been AI — a singular focus. It reeks of fish.
This singular focus is a massive bet but it also represents lost opportunities - specifically being open to other options or blind to other possibilities.
The AI debates in the public sphere aren't really very interesting. So much has been said by both sides. Somebody has very likely predicted the future. There's not much I can add. It too reeks of fish.
But I am an opportunist. When I see a ubiquitous singular focus, I immediately wonder what inefficiencies it creates.
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