Created: September 18, 2020
Modified: September 18, 2020
Modified: September 18, 2020
believe in something
This page is from my personal notes, and has not been specifically reviewed for public consumption. It might be incomplete, wrong, outdated, or stupid. Caveat lector.- I used to believe in AI and machine learning. It was obvious to me as a student that the ability to create intelligent machines will be a game-changer for almost everything.
- Computation itself is a relatively recent invention, and the intellectual foundations of many fields, from philosophy to economics to statistics to law, are still largely 'pre-computational'. Even now, many people speak seriously about things that computers will never be able to do. Religion and human exceptionalism are deeply-felt instincts, and even most 'serious' business and government leaders are locked into a worldview where current organizational structures are going to persist.
- I still 'believe' in all of this at an abstract level. But I don't act as if I believe it.
- I've felt depressed and as though nothing matters. I've felt as though, while I believe in AI broadly, I don't believe in any specific research project, and I don't believe in the ability of either academic work (mostly bullshit) or industry work (mostly myopic and unambitious) to make progress. I certainly don't believe in my own ability to make progress.
- I recognize that this is irrational. I can't believe both that AI as a field is under-valued, and that every specific project is over-valued. I need to do the work of figuring out where I think the value is, and reconciling these views.
- In the current world a lot of the immediate value is from AI is just tech.