Posts tagged with "humanity"

• The past cannot be changed. But I wonder if we are losing a moment to change the future.

  1/20/2026

  This Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I found myself reflecting on the immense gap of privilege created during the era of American slavery. Slavery existed globally, but its impact on Black Americans was uniquely devastating. While there are more reasons for this than I’m even aware of, two in particular strike me presently. First, the Industrial Revolution generated tremendous prosperity that Black Americans were excluded from. Second, they were unable to participate in the opportunity of cheap, claimable land.

  My own family’s history benefited from this land. My great-grandfather arrived in the Pacific Northwest and purchased farmland. He established a family farming corporation that accumulated numerous plots of land which our family still owns today. As the last of the family farmers prepares to retire, that land will be sold, resulting in a substantial profit.

  These historical factors placed one group of Americans at an incredible advantage while another was fighting for the basic rights promised, but not yet bestowed, by the U.S. Constitution. By the time the Civil Rights movement secured these rights, the economic damage was already deep-seated.

  Artificial Intelligence represents a unique moment in our history. It holds the potential to bridge this gap. However, I fear the opposite will occur. I fear that AI will not decrease the gap, but rather widen it until it becomes insurmountable.

  With hindsight, we look back at the past with shame, wishing we could change what transpired. We cannot change the past. But I wonder if we are currently overlooking a crucial moment to change the future, or if we will repeat the sins of our fathers?

• Quoting Richard Matthew Stallman in Reasons not to use ChatGPT

  10/3/2025

  Quoting Richard Matthew Stallman in Reasons not to use ChatGPT:

  It does not know what its output means. It has no idea that words can mean anything.… people should not trust systems that mindlessly play with words to be correct in what those words mean.

  My initial reaction is agreement. But then what are the implications? Does it follow that machines will never have intelligence? What makes our intelligence different? A calculator doesn’t know what its output means. Should we trust it? Is the way the calculator works with numbers significantly different than the way the LLM works with words. It’s empirically different, but when attempting to consider each domain they operate in is it significantly different?

  Did he think about all of this and then come to his conclusion?

  These are all interesting questions and conversations we should be having but I wonder if his real complaint is included in his trailing thoughts:

  Another reason to reject ChatGPT in particular is that users cannot get a copy of it.

• From magic to understanding to magic again

  9/12/2025

  Ethan Mollick writes that our relationship with AI is shifting, from being a partner we create with to the AI performing the work itself, On Working with Wizards. This aligns with the pursuit of AI agents, 2025 being dubbed the year of the agent. While Mollick doesn’t explicitly discuss agents, he uses the term “wizards” to describe a similar concept. He calls them wizards because:

  Magic gets done, but we don’t always know what to do with the results

  …wizards don’t want my help and work in secretive ways that even they can’t explain.

  This presents two important challenges. First, we lose, or never develop, the skill to evaluate what was produced. We lose ground, and so we are forced to trust more. As Mollick states:

  every time we hand work to a wizard, we lose a chance to develop our own expertise, to build the very judgment we need to evaluate the wizard’s work.

  But what I found especially striking is that throughout time, when we did not understand something, it was considered magic. Science came along and brought a method of understanding of how things work. Technology replaced magic. Is this direction now reversing? Are we losing our understanding, is magic returning? Mollick writes:

  The paradox of working with AI wizards is that competence and opacity rise together. We need these tools most for the tasks where we’re least able to verify them. It’s the old lesson from fairy tales: the better the magic, the deeper the mystery.

  This is a shocking realization. While many would push back against this analogy, it seems to be at least partially accurate. It raises a pressing question: Why are we so willing to trade our understanding and accept the magic in this context?