 |
| Image from Dallas Morning News used for educational purposes. |
The whole internet seems to be focused on Anthropic's Project Panama and how it amassed a huge library of books to scan and destroy, all the while internally communicating "we don't want it to become known we are working on this." Note that this is a move by the (comparatively) 'ethical' AI CEO, Dario Amodei, known for resisting military use of his products. To be fair, this makes him seem like an angel in comparison to Peter Thiel, who accepts human extinction in the face of AI, Palantir's Alex Karp, who enjoys talking to Nazis, and Elon Musk who, well you know.
Instead of looking at the controversy itself, I find it more interesting to look at the justifications that have been levied to defend Anthropic's project, and the logical and ethical fallacies they contain.
Here we go.
Justification #1 - They are just unimportant books
If they are such low quality crap, why feed them to AI? Are they trying to make the AI slop sloppier? And who gets to decide this? Are the choppers book critics or librarians? Also, if you are doing us the favor of destroying 'unimportant' books, why bother hiding it? Wouldn't you want to value signal even more?
Justification #2 - Cutting spines is the only way
We just used AI to scan a burnt scroll from Pompeii, but you're telling me that we can't scan an antique book without mutilating it? Give me a break. The 'only way' in corporate speak means the cheapest way, and so it is with scan & destroy. Just like data centers, who could have safe but expensive cooling, the reason they are using municipal water supplies is that it is cheaper for the corporations. And if engineers + AI couldn't figure out how to scan books without destroying them, what use are they?
Justification #3 - We bought it, it's our right
Once again, who are tech geeks to judge? And without a comprehensive list of the books destroyed, how do we know that a tome important as a cultural or historic artifact isn't mixed in there? By the same logic, AI CEOs buy the land for data centers, and thus claim the 'right' to pollute the community with noise and water with toxic chemicals. This is just an extension of the right to scrape data from the web without permission, now extended to the last bastion of human culture, physical (particularly analog) media.
Justification #4 - We judged this as a necessary step
Again, what gives a bunch of tech geeks the right to do this? They lack the credentials to doom a book and the judgment or concern to find a better way. If AI is for humanity, then humanity must have a say in its development. Sanitation workers in Ankara, Turkey, have created collective library from books they rescued from the trash of their city. From where I sit, Turkish garbagemen are more discerning and humane than any AI CEO.
What Really Was The Panama Project?
Let's see this as what it is - a bookburning by both literal and figurative techno-Nazis. It is also flooding the zone - we are so busy opposing AI art, data centers, flock cameras, and hidden permissions for surveillance in our social media like the Meta/Instagram one last month, that we have defense fatigue.
The Odyssey
I find it ironic that The Odyssey is trending now, as our society is very much Troy opening the gates to a giant AI horse. But instead of hiding inside, we have Odysseus clones like Amoedei, Karp, Musk and Thiel openly trying to convince us that dropping our guard is in our best interest. And just as in Homer's classic, our modern AI Odysseuses are self-serving liars ridden with hubris that threatens to carry us far away from our humanity if we let them.
No comments:
Post a Comment