In the age of the Robber Barons — the age Trump so-oft mythologizes — at least the rich would have built the masses libraries. It is the further dumbing down of the hoi polloi today that scares me most. With the degradation of the Fourth Estate and educational institutions, we are veering ever closer to a world in which people are so uninformed or misinformed that oligarchs can amass power and no one even cares to constrain them. The opposite of love (what they most want) is not hate (how they are viewed now) but rather disinterest.
In the era of the robber-barons there was a serious threat of communism. Carnegie didn’t build the libraries because he wanted greater learning, he did it because he was instructed that he had to improve his image or people would eventually revolt. Same thing with the sad dimes thing he did.
Agreed. I have no illusion that the robber barons did these acts out of a sense of generous largesse, but at least they made the appearance of wanting to “give back” to society and, to their credit, many of those institutions still stand today, to say nothing of the foundational wealth of the Rockefellers and Carnegies that continue to hand out grants even as federal funding is slashed. They were no heroes, to be sure, but the billionaires in Trump’s orbit have not even their minuscule shred of care for the common good. They are hoarders to the nth degree.
Wonderful, Ross. I worked in Silicon Valley in the beginning when a handful of hippies had democratized computing. They were artists, and did something miraculous to level the playing field for the rest of us.
Looking back over the last 40 years, I can’t remember ever once thinking: if only we had AI everything would be so much better. In fact, I never heard anyone asking for it.
Your article painted a tragic portrait of tech oligarchs, their insatiable demand for power driving reality away with every fresh billion. Their loneliness must be cavernous. Meanwhile, we pay a devastating price for something we never asked for and never needed.
Well, why don’t they try to use all that money to do something good- since he destroyed US AID, maybe he could take his own damn money and use it for the world’s poor, or disease research etc. What’s preventing any of these guys from doing good deeds with their money? Surely that would be more satisfying than destroying things?
You are deeply naïve if you think U.S. AID was anything other than a mechanism for organizing color revolution coups. This used to be a common leftist understanding BTW, ask Noam Chomsky if you don't believe me.
Oh are you a basic bitch neo-lib who supports forever wars and the hollowed out financialized economy? The point which obviously you were too dense to see, is that opposing U.S. A.I.D. is not strictly a right wing position,
I agree the current divorce of humanities from tech/STEM is tragic and that business leaders would benefit from imbibing more culture.
That said, it cuts both ways: I think the humanities are weakened by their reflexive scorn at tech. Previous generations of philosophers, painters, writers, etc were fascinated by how the world works, and it strengthened their work: the term “renaissance man” emerged from a real phenomenon!
I’m not too deeply immersed in literary Substack, but I follow a few, including this one, and as a relative outsider looking in, the takes on AI feel like a party line: universally dismissive, some mix of “not true but if it is true, bad”. The phrase “AI slop” sums it up.
What I find shocking about this is the utter lack of curiosity towards AI from otherwise highly-thoughtful people. AI is accomplishing things today that 10 years ago, most experts would have told you is total science fiction. Surely for anyone who cares how reality works, or who has the slightest interest in cognitive science, or any of the domains that AI is able to make inroads in, that’s at least a little interesting?
I don’t like to psychologize the objections of people who disagree with me because it feels unfair not to take the arguments on their merit, but it’s tempting here, because — again, as a relatively-friendly outsider who is watching this discourse — it really feels emotional, not logical: the conclusion “AI is bad” has been written, and then the arguments follow as needed.
Before I’m misunderstood, I should say that the opposite conclusion — AI is good — is also not something I reflexively support. AI job destruction is a real risk, it’s not 100% obvious to me how financially viable the technology will be long-term (though also not obvious to me it won’t be — hard to be afraid of AI taking all the jobs, and yet also convinced it’s an economically-worthless scam at the same time), and it’s unclear to me how AI will affect economic and political balance in society (my guess: a mix of good and bad consequences, like most new technologies).
What’s really missing for me is the *curiosity*. Stepping back from the boosterism and the hate, AI is just very, very interesting: the fact that it works is still stunning to me. Part of what I take away from a liberal arts education is the way to react to the new is to not rush to label it good or bad, but to understand and encounter.
I wish more societal leaders led from curiosity — and I wish humanities-oriented writers set a good example for them
There is much to ponder here, not least the ultimate narrowness of much of the tech elite. At a fundamental level many of these people lack imagination and are consequently misshapen, their binary world seemingly failing to encompass any shade. But perhaps you’re being over critical-the very restlessness that you identify is at the core of their drive and cannot easily be turned off at will.
For Trump, I think deal making is at the apex of his particular “hierarchy of needs”. It provides a critical validation of self and he will thus always need to destroy first which provides the rationale to subsequently cut a deal, temporarily assuaging this base requirement.
And the feudal lords had.. transcendental values and virtues.. or if they didn't, they were in a societal backdrop that created rewards and punishments for that, to steer them towards it in a serious way.
> But there is no real business model otherwise: AI costs many billions of dollars and there’s no way to recoup on these losses unless ChatGPT or Claude subscriptions start costing individuals thousands of dollars per month.
The business model in the near term is selling white-collar labor to firms, where "thousands of dollars" a month is completely viable if it lets you cut more thousands of dollars a month from salary costs. You can be skeptical about the timelines or even the viability there, but you can't expect both significant job losses from AI *and* no meaningful automation over the same time period.
I don't like to read things that assume to know so much about what is going on inside of another beings head - but all the same, incredibly well written dispatch - I could feel the heat on my face.
I can appreciate the romantic notions here, and the instinct to psychologize these tech guys. But this statement is hopelessly naive, or at least unfounded: “AI cannot stack up to the invention of the internet or the personal computer, or even the introduction of the iPhone.” It is way too early to know this and certainly way too early to assert it. We may be on the cusp of the most profound technological changes of our lives, which will make an iPhone seem quaint and obsolete. There is no arguing that this isn’t a live possibility. Which is not to put a value on it. Whatever is coming could be quite bad. But good or bad, figures like Sam Altman may seem quite small in the future technological drama to come.
I know it doesn't do me any good to defend Elon Musk of all people, but the goal of space colonization used to be so incredibly common in pop culture that I just don't see pursuing it as the same sort of mental condition as, say, building your own genetic army of warriors from your babymamas. Of course he'd want to do it, he read sci fi and probably watched Star Trek; Octavia Butler dreamed about it, too, only from Pasadena instead of Pretoria.
The tragedy is that his personality is so bad that he ruined what was once a happy dream of progress, and now many associate space exploration with waste and fear.
This is pretty weak sauce, and so is Grishakova's essay. If you and she also applied this armchair psychologizing to Fergie Chambers, Alex Soros, James Carlson, and other fabulously wealthy men whose politics you find more agreeable, it might be more persuasive.
The first point that's made is that the type of person who founds a multibillion dollar company is driven. Mountain climbers don't typically call it a career when they climb a mountain--instead they're driven to climb more mountains. For such a personality enforced idleness is a problem.
The second point that Barkan tries to make is a desire for broad popularity and respect. The first doesn't support the second and the essay suffers as a result.
These individuals do not turn towards art just as they would not go back to their younger selves and become regular coders again--because such work is, as far as they're concerned, low-class. They'd have to escape entirely from a mindset that devalues working with one's hands and mocks those who are not ambitious. There are millions of people who cannot escape from that mindset.
What exactly was "enlightened" about Obomba? His drone murder of hundreds of children in Pakistan? His drone murder of an American citizen? His staffing the administration with Wall St, insiders? His expansion of Bush's wars, like the Afghanistan "surge?"
In the age of the Robber Barons — the age Trump so-oft mythologizes — at least the rich would have built the masses libraries. It is the further dumbing down of the hoi polloi today that scares me most. With the degradation of the Fourth Estate and educational institutions, we are veering ever closer to a world in which people are so uninformed or misinformed that oligarchs can amass power and no one even cares to constrain them. The opposite of love (what they most want) is not hate (how they are viewed now) but rather disinterest.
In the era of the robber-barons there was a serious threat of communism. Carnegie didn’t build the libraries because he wanted greater learning, he did it because he was instructed that he had to improve his image or people would eventually revolt. Same thing with the sad dimes thing he did.
Agreed. I have no illusion that the robber barons did these acts out of a sense of generous largesse, but at least they made the appearance of wanting to “give back” to society and, to their credit, many of those institutions still stand today, to say nothing of the foundational wealth of the Rockefellers and Carnegies that continue to hand out grants even as federal funding is slashed. They were no heroes, to be sure, but the billionaires in Trump’s orbit have not even their minuscule shred of care for the common good. They are hoarders to the nth degree.
Wonderful, Ross. I worked in Silicon Valley in the beginning when a handful of hippies had democratized computing. They were artists, and did something miraculous to level the playing field for the rest of us.
Looking back over the last 40 years, I can’t remember ever once thinking: if only we had AI everything would be so much better. In fact, I never heard anyone asking for it.
Your article painted a tragic portrait of tech oligarchs, their insatiable demand for power driving reality away with every fresh billion. Their loneliness must be cavernous. Meanwhile, we pay a devastating price for something we never asked for and never needed.
Maybe we were all a little too quick to judge George W for taking up painting in his retirement. Might be the move for more of these guys…
Well, why don’t they try to use all that money to do something good- since he destroyed US AID, maybe he could take his own damn money and use it for the world’s poor, or disease research etc. What’s preventing any of these guys from doing good deeds with their money? Surely that would be more satisfying than destroying things?
You are deeply naïve if you think U.S. AID was anything other than a mechanism for organizing color revolution coups. This used to be a common leftist understanding BTW, ask Noam Chomsky if you don't believe me.
Not a fan of Noam Chomsky. Wouldn’t ask him anything.
Oh are you a basic bitch neo-lib who supports forever wars and the hollowed out financialized economy? The point which obviously you were too dense to see, is that opposing U.S. A.I.D. is not strictly a right wing position,
a little sensitive aren’t you,
I agree the current divorce of humanities from tech/STEM is tragic and that business leaders would benefit from imbibing more culture.
That said, it cuts both ways: I think the humanities are weakened by their reflexive scorn at tech. Previous generations of philosophers, painters, writers, etc were fascinated by how the world works, and it strengthened their work: the term “renaissance man” emerged from a real phenomenon!
I’m not too deeply immersed in literary Substack, but I follow a few, including this one, and as a relative outsider looking in, the takes on AI feel like a party line: universally dismissive, some mix of “not true but if it is true, bad”. The phrase “AI slop” sums it up.
What I find shocking about this is the utter lack of curiosity towards AI from otherwise highly-thoughtful people. AI is accomplishing things today that 10 years ago, most experts would have told you is total science fiction. Surely for anyone who cares how reality works, or who has the slightest interest in cognitive science, or any of the domains that AI is able to make inroads in, that’s at least a little interesting?
I don’t like to psychologize the objections of people who disagree with me because it feels unfair not to take the arguments on their merit, but it’s tempting here, because — again, as a relatively-friendly outsider who is watching this discourse — it really feels emotional, not logical: the conclusion “AI is bad” has been written, and then the arguments follow as needed.
Before I’m misunderstood, I should say that the opposite conclusion — AI is good — is also not something I reflexively support. AI job destruction is a real risk, it’s not 100% obvious to me how financially viable the technology will be long-term (though also not obvious to me it won’t be — hard to be afraid of AI taking all the jobs, and yet also convinced it’s an economically-worthless scam at the same time), and it’s unclear to me how AI will affect economic and political balance in society (my guess: a mix of good and bad consequences, like most new technologies).
What’s really missing for me is the *curiosity*. Stepping back from the boosterism and the hate, AI is just very, very interesting: the fact that it works is still stunning to me. Part of what I take away from a liberal arts education is the way to react to the new is to not rush to label it good or bad, but to understand and encounter.
I wish more societal leaders led from curiosity — and I wish humanities-oriented writers set a good example for them
There is much to ponder here, not least the ultimate narrowness of much of the tech elite. At a fundamental level many of these people lack imagination and are consequently misshapen, their binary world seemingly failing to encompass any shade. But perhaps you’re being over critical-the very restlessness that you identify is at the core of their drive and cannot easily be turned off at will.
For Trump, I think deal making is at the apex of his particular “hierarchy of needs”. It provides a critical validation of self and he will thus always need to destroy first which provides the rationale to subsequently cut a deal, temporarily assuaging this base requirement.
And the feudal lords had.. transcendental values and virtues.. or if they didn't, they were in a societal backdrop that created rewards and punishments for that, to steer them towards it in a serious way.
> But there is no real business model otherwise: AI costs many billions of dollars and there’s no way to recoup on these losses unless ChatGPT or Claude subscriptions start costing individuals thousands of dollars per month.
The business model in the near term is selling white-collar labor to firms, where "thousands of dollars" a month is completely viable if it lets you cut more thousands of dollars a month from salary costs. You can be skeptical about the timelines or even the viability there, but you can't expect both significant job losses from AI *and* no meaningful automation over the same time period.
The greatness of your article is obvious by the response it has garnered from all angles! Touché
I don't like to read things that assume to know so much about what is going on inside of another beings head - but all the same, incredibly well written dispatch - I could feel the heat on my face.
I can appreciate the romantic notions here, and the instinct to psychologize these tech guys. But this statement is hopelessly naive, or at least unfounded: “AI cannot stack up to the invention of the internet or the personal computer, or even the introduction of the iPhone.” It is way too early to know this and certainly way too early to assert it. We may be on the cusp of the most profound technological changes of our lives, which will make an iPhone seem quaint and obsolete. There is no arguing that this isn’t a live possibility. Which is not to put a value on it. Whatever is coming could be quite bad. But good or bad, figures like Sam Altman may seem quite small in the future technological drama to come.
I know it doesn't do me any good to defend Elon Musk of all people, but the goal of space colonization used to be so incredibly common in pop culture that I just don't see pursuing it as the same sort of mental condition as, say, building your own genetic army of warriors from your babymamas. Of course he'd want to do it, he read sci fi and probably watched Star Trek; Octavia Butler dreamed about it, too, only from Pasadena instead of Pretoria.
The tragedy is that his personality is so bad that he ruined what was once a happy dream of progress, and now many associate space exploration with waste and fear.
This is pretty weak sauce, and so is Grishakova's essay. If you and she also applied this armchair psychologizing to Fergie Chambers, Alex Soros, James Carlson, and other fabulously wealthy men whose politics you find more agreeable, it might be more persuasive.
The first point that's made is that the type of person who founds a multibillion dollar company is driven. Mountain climbers don't typically call it a career when they climb a mountain--instead they're driven to climb more mountains. For such a personality enforced idleness is a problem.
The second point that Barkan tries to make is a desire for broad popularity and respect. The first doesn't support the second and the essay suffers as a result.
These individuals do not turn towards art just as they would not go back to their younger selves and become regular coders again--because such work is, as far as they're concerned, low-class. They'd have to escape entirely from a mindset that devalues working with one's hands and mocks those who are not ambitious. There are millions of people who cannot escape from that mindset.
What exactly was "enlightened" about Obomba? His drone murder of hundreds of children in Pakistan? His drone murder of an American citizen? His staffing the administration with Wall St, insiders? His expansion of Bush's wars, like the Afghanistan "surge?"
Be specific.