A Critical Look at Technology

Technology is insidious in that people usually see the local improvements of technology. By local improvement, I mean an improvement that solves an immediate problem and does not make its entire effects known. Take smartphones: they solve local problems such as notifying people immediate if something goes wrong, and they relieve some of the stress caused by something going wrong in the first place.

Of course, the longer-term effect of smartphones is that it makes the world much more busy, and causes other sorts of problems like smartphone addiction and people having car accidents while they are driving.

Some technologies may be truly benign, or at least benign enough so that even the most enlightened societies might choose to keep them. Other technologies might have a mix of good and bad effects and we might choose to keep these technologies simply because the good outweights the bad.

My ultimate ideal for society would be that we examine each technology thoroughly and decide whether to use it only after an intensely critical look at it. In this post, I will describe eight challenges that will accompany the path to such a society.

1. Some people’s live improve a lot with technology

Some people’s lives are much better with technology, and other people might just really enjoy using technology. Of course, I also enjoy using technology like my camera.

People enjoy using technology even when teh overall effect of the technology on society is negative, simply because the negative effect does not follow from the individual’s use of said technology. Technology is interesting because it is addictive. It plays upon our instinct to gather as much information as possible and it panders to our social instincts to connect, even though the resulting connection enabled by technology is often inferior to real connection.

This effect alone will make it hard for some people to give up technology, and it will make it hard for people to want a society where that technology is not as advanced. Many people simply love using their phones, and would find them hard to give up. When AI is more thoroughly integrated with phones, the addiction will only become worse.

Moreover, the people whose lives are especially comfortable are made so by technology. Those people are in turn the people who will have the least to lose if our society collapses due to environmental degradation, which in turn is caused by technology. And finally, those people are the ones who often have the most power in our society, not only because they are often the people with the most money, but also because they are the most highly educated and are the ones who are at the forefront of technological development.

The biggest problem in societal reform will be to convince these people that endless progress is bad. Their retirement accounts are often dependent on endless economic growth, which is primarily a function of technology or if you will, a reflection of the growth of the technological organism.

2. Negative effects are long-term

Another challenge with technology is that the negative effects of technology are not immediately visible. Humans just were not programmed to take into account consequences such as the complete ecological collapse of the planet. We evolved at a time where humans could not destroy the global stability of our ecosystem. A global collapse of the ecosystem was never an evolutionary pressure for evolution.

Humans, like all creatures, evolved to maximize fitness, which essentially means being able to prolong their lineage. In simpler but cruder terms, humans made decisions so that they can have children who themselves can have children. Therefore, our instincts, which drive our logical reasoning, are powerfully biased to focus on gains only towards this goal.

Of course, we have the capacity for abstract thought and thus we have the ability to see the error in our ways, at least if we’re trying to maximize sustainability, but this realization will always be shadowed by our short-term instincts. Thus, if we are to have any hope of reaching sustainability and harmony with other plants and animals, we need to be much more aware of this feature of ours, which is a shortcoming in the context of our overpopulated and unsustainable resource usage.

In short, the rapid development of new technologies fits our short-term brains perfectly, but is antithetical to our long-term survival.

3. Prisoner’s dilemma

The prisoner’s dilemma is a pervasive phenomenon in modern culture. It describes a situation where two people would be better off if neither of them took any action, but because just one person taking the action benefits themselves IF the other person does not take the action, both have to take the action. It’s the game-theoretic description of the classical arms race, and due to our capitalistic society, the prisoner’s dilemma is everywhere.

In the realm of technology, the prisoner’s dilemma occurs because one person using a new technology will bring benefit to that one single person, and so other people use the technology merely to keep up even if in their hearts they believe that using the technology is not right, and goes against their values, or more prosaically, even if that technology isn’t really crucial for them to make a decent living. I once tried to convince the users of Mathoverflow to reject AI and leave the Stackexchange network. The response I got from Joseph van Name was a classic example of the prisoner’s dilemma:

A stand against AI development will simply allow some groups to progress unimpeded while other groups will be stifled, and this effort will result in inequality and less AI safety. If one wants to slow down AI progress, then one should have worked on AI safety earlier, and one now needs to work harder on AI safety. While we may not be able to stop or slow down the development of AI, we can certainly steer the development of AI into a safer or more friendly direction.

Of course, I reject everything said here and I do not believe anyone can steer AI in a more friendly direction with such an attitude.

The prisoner’s dilemma is one of the prime drivers of all technological development. The grass is greener on the newer side, so everyone flocks to the latest and the greatest. Greatest indeed.

Unfortunately, the strategy that is rational for the one-time prisoner’s dilemma in the game-theoretic sense is completely devastating for humanity in the long term. If we are to have a critical, societal-level look at technology, we will need a way to combat the prisoner’s dilemma, introducing new rewards that disrupt the basic game-theoretic tragedy for people so that the rational strategy is no longer rational in the short term.

4. Tech solves problems created by previous tech

Technology introduces all sorts of side-effects, some of them very dangerous. For example, pollution caused by the technology of fossil fuels increases lung diseases such as asthma and cancer. And sometimes, the only way to solve these problems in the short-term is to use even more technology. In the case of lung diseases, it’s medical technology.

Another example is loneliness caused by having so much technology that gets in the way of genuine human interaction. In this case, the technology is the technique of therapy and antidepressants. There may be better ways to solve this and other problems brought about by technology, but creating new technology is often the path of least resistance, which is very attractive to us in our fast-paced world.

Thus, we need people to understand the problems created by technology and to find even more creative solutions to these problems that do not make use of new technology.

5. Capitalism

In theory, I have nothing wrong with capitalism on a small scale, especially when it is sustainable. Sustainable capitalism means an emphasis on local trade, local production, and involvement throughout a local community. It involves a strong ethic of everyone having enough through trading of their comparitive advantages, without the ruthless and soulless drive for endless efficiency that is characteristic of the advanced technology mediated globalization.

On a large scale, capitalism has essentially failed. It has succeeded in making many people comfortable, but it has also produced a large machine of endless growth on a finite planet, and a force of humanity powered by unsustainable technologies like fossil fuels.

In the future, one of the key ways of living more sustainable would be to slowly cause political and economic reform so that the rapid development of technologies for short-term gain is not longer profitable. Capitalism works well in a society where the size of the society is dwarfed by the number of resources and the size of the surrounding habitat, and when the society is relatively homogeneous. In the sense of sustainable ecology, capitalism starts to fail in our case because the reverse is true: the size and complexity of our society dwarf natural ecology.

6. Anti-technology Is Differentially Attractive

On the surface, anti-technology movements or other movements that promote caution against technology are much more appealing to those who especially love nature compared to those who have little exposure to nature or who have never had the chance to experience the beauties of nature.

Thus, although anti-technology views are crucial to oppose the technological organism, anti-technology individuals and groups risk being insular and they risk being limited to existing as a place for those who detest the onslaught of advanced technology.

Even if a fairly large group emerges made up of people who want to be more cautious with technology, they risk merely being a secular version of the Amish who live relatively peacefully amongst themselves but who do not effect change. Although this would make members of the anti-technology group happier in some ways, it would not solve the underlying problem: to prevent the mass of humanity from crushing other lifeforms with the aid of advanced technology and resource usage.

Thus, it is imperative for those who wish to change the world not merely to be content with living away from technology, but also to continually strive to stifle the crushing nature of modern humanity on our biosphere.

7. Livelihoods are Dependent on Technology

Most humans now depend on technology for food and shelter. They don’t just depend on it indirectly in the sense that advanced technology is used in farming and house construction, however. They also depend on it directly because a great mass of jobs are in fact are involved with the creation of new technology, in some way.

For example, the role of marketers is to promote new technology—most of which we don’t need. The role of programmers is to make computer hardware more functional for the technological organism. The role of bus drivers it to drive people to their workplaces so they can create new technology…and so forth.

Like it or not, any job you can get will likely strengthen the technological organism in some way, no matter how much of a Luddite you are (and I use Luddite in the positive sense).

Moreover, our society is set up so that as you get old, you are taken care of through mechanisms that are sustained mainly through technological growth. For example, some old people depend on their retirement funds and those funds are partially increased through investments into technology companies.

8. Inertia

All the previous problems are given great momentum because of inertia. Due to the massive world population, making changes is very hard. Some people cite the world reaction to COVID to prove that we can move fast when necessary. However, the reaction to COVID was within the interests of the technological system. Of course, when the existing system is threatened, it can react quickly.

The same type of reaction can be seen with the Russia-Ukraine war. Pretty soon after the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia, a bunch of the major world economies put an economic strangle on Russia and sent an enormous number of weapons to the Ukraine.

Does this mean that the massive human populace can work together to solve problems? Absolutely not. It proves that when there is a direct threat to technological and economic growth, the system can react quickly to it. But the dangers to humanity caused by the technological system would require an opposition to momentum, which is far more difficult than protecting the system.

Additional Problems

Since the writing of this post, I have come up with some additional problems:

1. People who love nature may detest technology, but in turn this may make their crusade towards a more enlightened future look more like an outright crusade against technology (which it could be as well). However, people who are aware of technology’s extreme dangers need to work together to find an optimum path towards an enlightened society, which may require subtle thinking with less emotion.
2. The education of the latest generation in higher educational institutions is overwhelmingly politicized, mostly towards the radical left. Most of them are taught to see the world in very black and white terms. Part of the specific nature of the radical left is to seek comfort in the existing technological system by promoting equity across pre-defined demographic groups in technological development.

Conclusion

In short, the problems facing our technologically strangled society are huge. Solving them requires collaboration, and talent in all areas in order to address these serious problems. In order to be ecologically sustainable, we need to solve all of these problems to move peacefully from our present state into one that does not pose a serious existential threat to every lifeform, including ourselves.

These problems seem insurmountable sometimes, and so that is one reason why we see a variety of rebellious acts against society such as anarchism and revolutionaries. However, simple small-scale revolutions and anarchism aren’t enough to make too much change on their own, or if they are, they might also be chaotic. Of course, various ideas in anarchism or other similar styles may have useful insights.

The most important thing to do if you believe in reform or revolution is to contribute in your capacity to promote skepticism towards technology, growth, and our devastation of the ecosystem for short-term gain.

But in order to solve the problems of our technological society posing a crushing risk to the planet, we need to go beyond single ideologies or strategies. We need to evolve organically with the problem at hand, and carefully instill all these ideas into the mass of our population so that its inertia can move away from endless growth to sustainability.

I welcome any comments!

We tend to look at technology as a stream of individual inventions. That was certainly how technology was presented to me through school and I think this is how most people view technology as well. However, the nature of technology is hardly touched upon in modern discourse. What do I mean by the nature of technology? I mean things such as the motivations of those who create technology, what technology actually is, and its ultimate aims, as well as how it interacts with the peculiarities of modern society. From my point of view, these are some of the most important observations and topics in this realm:

The People Who Create Technology

The most advanced technology (computer and science-based technology such as bioengineering) is primarily created by those who are highly attracted to this field. This means those of the introverted type who may have tendencies as teenagers and young adults to prefer computers over people, and who find comfort in immersing themselves in arcane knowledge.

I am not saying these tendencies are bad, but they do have their own peculiarities. For example, over time, such people are prone to create technologies that isolate people on a global scale, simply because technologies that are effective in doing so will be especially attractive to such people.

From this observation, we conclude we must be extremely careful because technology creation will be biased towards those types of technologies that tend to isolate people. An example is AI which can act as a buffer between real people and the user: with an advanced AI doing most information-gathering tasks for you, you no longer have to interact with the people who create information.

Capitalism

The fundamental core of capitalism, which is trade of goods and services through comparitive advantage, works on a small scale. But capitalism has a second-order effect that is especially emphasized through globalization and technology. This second order effect is that short-term monetary gains are emphasized over all else. Moreover, our capitalistic society makes it so that engaging in transactions that bring short-term monetary gains are necessarily for survival for most people.

This is hardly just a technology problem, although without advanced technology, this second-order effect would be negligible for two reasons: the efficiency of trade would not be sufficient to make this effect as noticeable, and even if such an effect were noticeable, a lack of technology would make us relatively harmless to the biosphere.

This interaction between technology and capitalism leads us to conclude that present-stage capitalism will be unstable in the long-run, and so we must make modifications to our current economic system so that the development of new technology is much less profitable than it is currently. (This may involve heavy regulations, but it would be better if it involved a large-scale opposition by the people, which in turn may be spurned by a new, more beneficial and rewarding way of life.)

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

The prisoner’s dilemma is a two-person game (in the sense of game theory) where two people need to make one of two choices. In the realm of technology, it can be seen in the following principle: if neither person chooses to use a piece of technology, then both will be better off. But, if you know your opposition will not use the technology, you can use it to gain an advantage over them and thus get a huge reward. Unfortunately, your opposition knows this and so uses the technology as well, making both parties worse off.

This is true of AI. We would all be better off if no one used advanced AI. However, because some people are not using it yet (or as effectively as Mr. Joe Tech), then Mr. Joe Tech can use AI to gain a huge advantage over everyone else (but only in the short term). Realizing this, everyone else copies Mr. Joe Tech and uses AI as well, thereby making the entire world worse. Although everyone would be better off not using AI, it only takes one person to start the rat-race to the bottom of using AI.

The prisoner’s dilemma is one of the most pervasive and worst facets of humanity, because we have the intellectual capability to understand the choices involved. If we did not have such analytical brains, it is possible that we would not drive ourselves into disaster by playing out the prisoner’s dilemma as “rational agents”.

From this rather grim observation, we conclude that the only way to avoid the prisoner’s dilemma is to find a creative way out of playing the “game” in the first place. This could again involve mass opposition to it, or even changing our way of thinking through spiritual development such as meditation.

The Rich Control Progress

Unfortunately, there is a certain kind of person that relishes intellectual stimulation and places it above all else. Typically, this is the person who is well-off in the world in terms of money, has intellectually engaging friends, and welcomes technological progress because they derive short-term value from it in terms of what new intellectual stimulation it brings.

Many university professors, programmers, doctors, dentists, and other well-off people are of this ilk, although not all of course. There are some individuals from every one of these disciplines that are ecologically aware and responsible, but it’s safe to say that most are not (and I have spent time with many such individuals).

The most unfortunate thing is that these people have the most power in society, and they are extremely attached to their way of life, which is primarily having enough disposable income to indulge themselves with the latest technological trends. They spend their working hours forwarding the technological society and their disposable income on making new technological developments profitable. The addictive nature of technology and of finding new and strange ways of intellectual stimulation makes sure that these people will drive society to the brink of disaster, and perhaps past it.

Of course, there is nothing morally wrong with these people in general. They are typically very nice, friendly, and generous. However, they are so addicted to progress in all forms that they are somewhat blinded to the true nature of their power.

From this, we must conclude that a portion of educational materials about the dangers of technology should be directed towards such individuals, so that they can realize the effects of technology and work to stop it.

The Emergent Phenomenon

There are always, higher-order emergent phenomena that arise from complex systems. In modern society, we have the technological organism that I described in a previous blog post. Briefly, I stated that society has built up such a tightly-integrated system through technology that the entirety of technology along with our interacting with it makes for something that is similar to an organism.

In other words, our vast numbers combined with technology behave as if it’s a life-form of its own, and this life-form can defend itself. So, even if some people are aware of the technological problem, the system has countless ways of fighting back against the anti-technology effort.

From this, we conclude that we must study the technological system and figure out ways past its defenses, which may include modifying other societal structures such as capitalism to ruin the economic forces that drive technological development.

Technology Creates Problems That Only It Can Solve

Technology creates so many problems, but of course the main ones are human isolation and climate change, which is unequivocally human-caused. But, there are countless other problems, too.

And these problems are such that the only “obvious” and quick solutions to them involve even more technology. Due to our shortsightedness though, these “solutions” will actually bring about even more problems than they solve. I would not be surprised if for every problem solved with technology, the resulting new technology will bring about 10 new problems!

The only solution here is to educate people to analyze technology in great detail and be extremely cautious of it. Ideally, some technologies will be destroyed and altogether abandoned, such as medical research into aging and AI.

Conclusion

Technology is propelled by many forces out of our immediate control, and this post has looked at a few of them. I suggest that you never again think of technology as indiviudal inventions that you can choose to use and that we have the free will to choose or not choose. Technology is far more insidious and dangerous than that, and plays upon our early evolutionary instincts to drive itself forward and lead to our destruction.

This subject is the most serious and gravest that we have faced as a species and we must propagate these ideas or else will may perish.

In this article, I will tell you about six of the most dangerous threats from artificial intelligence, also known as AI. These six threats are so great that we should stop all artificial intelligence research, outlaw companies like OpenAI, and destroy all existing research.

1. It creates mass automation on a global scale

Artificial intelligence like DALL-E or ChatGPT can, or will gain the ability in the near future to overtake humans in most creative disciplines. Of course, it is unlikely that it will approach the best human art, but it is close enough so that most creative work will be done by AI.

Researchers are proponents of artificial intelligence often like to say that AI will still need humans to guide it, but that does not negate the danger. At some point, AI will no longer need humans. But even before then, it will need many orders of magnitude less humans to do its work.

Some people also say that AI may never equal humans in the creation of beauty, so that the best art will still be the domain of humans. That may also be true, but AI does not have to equal humans to take over their jobs. It only has to be cheaper than humans and do the job of the majority of humans as well as they can to cause societal disruption.

This does a few things:

1. Concentrates even more wealth at tech companies and programmers, who are already receiving a disproportionate share of wealth
2. Makes it impossible or difficult for people to enter creative work. Humans fundamentally need to feel useful in society and by removing creative work as an option, there is hardly anything fulfilling left to do
3. Creates a world where humans have to rely on each other so little that we will stop caring for others

2. It creates a potential, unstoppable adversary

AI and computers have the potential to be very “smart” even if they are not sentient. They may deceive us as an emergent phenomenon, even if we cannot ascribe human intent to them. As a result, AI will continually shape humanity to serve its needs.

This does not require sentience, but is merely an emergent phenomenon of technology as an organism. Certainly bacteria does not require sentience to decompose dead animals.

3. It creates a world of confusion

Many search engines and content on the internet will be generated by AI, and some already has been. While we know how to interact with humans, our fundamental instincts will make it impossible to interact with AI and understand the information produced by it.

Soon, the internet will be filled with plausible-sounding garbage, and since there is no human motivation behind producing those falsehoods, it will be much harder to detect.

4. It is dehumanizing

In a world with AI, we will have to interact with it at every level: calling customer support, ordering food at a restaurant, and even being represented by a lawyer.

AI will directly remove human interaction from most levels of society because it is cheaper. Thus, it will be almost impossible to meet new people or to make friends, except on carefully-monitored online platforms where you exchange a few words with other humans just so you don’t starve from human contact completely.

5. It will create a dystopia

Fundamentally, humans need a purpose in life. Of course, no one wants to work a crappy job, and AI will eliminate that. But humans need to strive for something, and sometimes even a crappy job can be a stepping stone to a nice job.

Technology has already removed a fundamental need of working for our food and shelter directly, and AI will remove any last trace of that requirement. This will be especially bad for teenagers, who will not be able to find that first summer job.

6. It removes responsibility

Humans have a fundamental need to feel responsible for something. For example, I am responsible for paying my bills, and for keeping myself fed. Other people might be responsible for their children.

Do you think technology will stop at its current point? No. Soon, it will be “better” at raising children than you are, and it will become so good that it will provide for all our needs, turning us into children who can never grow up, consuming media by the day to keep ourselves from going crazy.

A lot of people think the idea of being cared for like a child and having unlimited free time is a utopia, but it is not. Once AI reaches that level, it might seem good at first but the cracks will start to show in what we have made.

People will start showing eerie symptoms of maladjustment. Our brains simply can’t cope with this illusory utopia; it is a dystopia. People will go crazy and the only remedy will be mind-altering drugs. We are like children who have not yet learned about a good diet and who have unrestricted access to the cookie jar. Yes, the cookies taste good but eating a jar every day will eventually make us fat.

Conclusion

AI is an offense to humanity. It is disgusting for the reasons I listed and for many more. I am appalled that technology companies and revolted by anyone who contributes one line of code to any AI system.

If we want to remain human, we should learn extremely quickly that AI is dangerous and should be destroyed. Companies like OpenAI and Microsoft and others should be banned from using advanced AI and machine learning should not be taught at universities. Companies whose only product is AI should be dismantled. The allure of playing God is too great and we need to be mature enough to recognize this.