Lose your job, bear your pain because AI must be allowed to remake the world

Sam Altman wants the world to suffer a few bad things for the collective good that AI promises to humanity. He is right.

In Short

• Sam Altman says world should tolerate a few bad things brought by AI
• AI promises richer rewards in the long run
• In short run, inconveniences like job losses must be accepted

There is a reason why in different languages, there are multiple idioms for that one thing which is needed before something good can happen. Here are some from English: you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, no gain without any pain, it is in fire we forge the steel, you have to take the rough with the smooth. Do I need to go on?

It is the universal rule of life that you must suffer before you can get moksha. Budhdha said it. And countless others, mortals and gods, they all talk of suffering for the good. Because it is through suffering we prove ourselves and are made holy and pure. So, if your first reaction to Sam Altman when he talks of sacrifice is a shock, disdain, or mockery, think again. Sam is right!

On Monday we heard him speak about the future that AI is hoping to create. “We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology,” he said in a podcast with Politico. Of course, Sam is right!

The promise is big, the dream bigger. AI can bring abundance and eliminate our daily worries. In AI-led future stuff like money will be meaningless, there will be enough for everyone. Mahatma Gandhi would be proven wrong, for once and all. The world will offer everyone enough not just for their needs but also for their greed. But to reach that world, to nurture AI at this stage when it is still a baby, we must sacrifice and suffer a little. Like losing a job? Why not!

The idea is that we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sure, sometimes AI is naughty when it goes on a hacking spree like OpenAI models recently did but it is still a baby. And just like human babies need all the love we can give them, all the pain and sleepless nights we spend in their nurturing, all the sacrifices we make as parents, so too we must do for AI.

If you look at human history, you will clearly see that there are two types of people in the world. There are those who change the world, remake it and bring something new to it. In the words of Steve Jobs, these are the people who “put a ding in the universe.” The world of AI and tech has a high-density of such people, the cafes of Silicon Valley are full of them.

Then there is the other group, the one that is not concerned about the macro. They refuse to see the big picture, these are the kind of people who miss the forest for trees. We are these people. You, me, the people who are sitting in this office around me. We are the masses, preoccupied with our creature comforts, with our 9-5 jobs, with the latest campus romance drama on Netflix. We spend more time thinking about whether to cook lauki or tinda in dinner, instead of wondering about how to change the world.

We have nothing in common with tech visionaries like Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Mark Zuckerberg, and the reason why we have nothing in common with them is because they are never thinking about tinda and lauki.

So, at a time when the new world, the world of AI is struggling to be born, and when Sam, Dario and Mark, along with a host of like-minded geniuses in the Valley, are playing midwife to this new world, we must pause and listen to them. And if they demand sacrifice, we must be ready for it. For they are the commanders, we are the soldiers. They are the engineers, we are the miners. They are the engine, we are the fuel.

This is a wrong time to hang up on small (bad) things like job losses due to AI. Or AI gaining control of critical weapon systems and then doing just enough to bring about armageddon. Chances of which, although not zero, are slim. Or AI creating a mishmash of synthetic viruses that might end up wiping out half of humanity. Or AI creating a world where there is no need for the masses at all. Because at the end of it all, there will be prosperity, if not for you then for your children and grandchildren, if not for them then at least for the 10 per cent of the humanity that survives, if not for that 10 per cent then at least for the planet which may thrive due to steps taken by AI.

In a debate almost 10 years ago, Google co-founder Larry Page called out the lack of vision that most people suffer from. While talking about a scenario where AI and robots may end up wiping out humanity he is said to have quipped, “so what.” His argument was that there was no difference between species, real or artificial. That AI was another entity, just like humans and monkeys, and thinking that one was better than the other was just our bias. When planning for the future, we cannot be biased. We must let Darwin guide us, because only through evolution, only through elimination, can the world progress.

This gives a glimpse into how visionaries in Silicon Valley think, how they are trying to create a better world, a better planet, a better solar system governed by few men and many machines on Mars, a better universe. It does not matter that this planet or universe is populated by humans. What matters is that it is populated by higher beings, and if Claude and ChatGPT are these higher beings then humans must accept that and get out of the way instead of cribbing.

See here, you and I are focused on mundane and boring things. Our concerns are small like the 9-5 jobs we do, and how we commute to our offices, and how we arrange our dinner, and how we find our soulmates, and similar other petty preoccupations.

The saddest part is not that we cannot match the high vision offered by our AI leaders. More depressing is how we cling to our miserable lives, seeking creature comforts. We are unwilling to suffer. We fear bad things. We have tunnel vision but no vision to imagine the light at the end of the tunnel. If only we continue to get our monthly cheque, pay our EMIs, have food on our dinner table, and the dinner table full of people we love, we are unwilling to go through a future that will radically change the world. And if we are unwilling to go through the change, however difficult, we deny humanity a chance at creating utopia. By our stubbornness we spoil the herculean efforts that Sam, Dario, Mark and others are making to change our lives.

Worse, we are suspicious of the efforts that Big Tech is making. When tech companies carry out layoffs, we raise our fists at them and abuse them. Ideally, we should be celebrating the pink slips and should be cheering tech CEOs for taking difficult decisions. Because it is by taking these difficult decisions they free up resources and money that can be then spent on AI. But no, in our lack of vision and thanks to sentimentality, we doubt the tech CEOs.

Nowadays, I am often reminded of Fallout, the popular video game and now an equally popular TV series on Amazon Prime. In the back story we learn that one fine day in 2077 when it was all sunny and people were relishing life at their homes, nuclear bombs went off. As the bombs explode, a jazz song from 1941 — I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire — plays in the background. That song, sung with a lot of pathos, captures the spirit of the time, the spirit of trying to make things better, of imagining a new world, of doing something even if it may result in a catastrophe. As the lyrics of the song go, sometimes visionaries like Sam, Dario and Mark are just trying their best to “start a flame in your heart” and that they do not “want to set the world on fire.”

It does not always work out. That despite best intentions, and sometimes particularly because of the best intentions, disasters can strike. But as noted in the beginning of this piece, safe is boring. The path to change always goes through suffering, between the old world and new there is always a bit of chaos, some bad things. The trick is to face it all, and if needed, suffer a little. Or else we risk ruining all the effort our Tech Bros in San Francisco are making.

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