AI Doomer vs AI Booster

Quoting Nilesh Jasani

The speed of this pivot was breathtaking. The skeptics changed their arguments with the terrified fervor of late converts. They did not change their underlying conclusions. The conclusion always came first ...

The extreme optimists are equally guilty of intellectual fraud. They dip aggressively into historical archives for psychological comfort. They point blindly to the invention of the mechanical loom. They cite the widespread adoption of the automobile. They even weaponize the invention of flash-frozen food...

What both camps share is a stubborn refusal to accept reality. We are standing in a genuinely unrecognizable era. Historical precedents offer zero intellectual protection...

The rules are entirely alien. The fundamental players are no longer exclusively human.

And later on:

A child in a remote village finally receives a world-class education. An algorithm tailors every lesson to her specific mind. It is a beautiful triumph of accessibility. It is also a quiet tragedy. That same child will never secure the offshore service job her older sibling cherished.

I got around to reading the Citrini report that has caused shockwaves amongst financial types. It said nothing new - but what it did was couch it in the language of finance. Analysts and fund managers (who are supposed to be analysing events and managing money) suddenly woke up to what has been going on around them for the past year. Which is why it caused such a shock.