Let's Pay Attention!

To those people behind the curtain

from The Book of Urizen by William Blake

This is the post I was writing when I realized that I don’t have that much more to say about AI. And I don’t! But—before I cease and desist—I feel compelled to share some of the various essays and podcasts I’ve been obsessively looking at. This is partly because I’ve realized that in my two previous AI posts (“Bing” and “Between Belief”) I actually buried some of the most informative links in my wildly gesticulating words; I’m guessing that’s why most readers didn’t look at them. Which is too bad because the people featured in those links are people who can tell you a lot more than I can, or who are at least opining from a more informed place.

So in this post I featured some particular people, some of them not well-known to the public generally. It’s a deep dive, several of them in fact, so if you’re not interested or feel like you’ve seen all you want to see about this for the moment—turn back now! This will be interesting primarily to people who haven’t already had high exposure and are willing to spend some time.

To start, here (again) is the wiki page for Transhumanism. I’m starting here partly because I ended the post titled “Between Belief and Un-” by referencing the idea that human workers (and humans generally) might possibly be replaced and/or transformed as a species—a core idea in TH. I’m also starting here because it’s my impression that most people, even the well-informed, have never heard of this movement and I think it’s something everyone should be aware of.