Top-Heavy : The Real Problem With AI is Balance
It's not just who or what it's built for - it's who it's built to benefit.
"Scientific and technological progress themselves are value-neutral... They are just very good at doing what they do. If you want to do selfish, greedy, intolerant and violent things, scientific technology will provide you with by far the most efficient way of doing so. But if you want to do good, to solve the world's problems, to progress in the best value-laden sense, once again, there is no better means to those ends than the scientific way."
— Richard Dawkins
Something that happens to me - a lot - as a tech startup founder is that people express concern about tech, and AI tech in particular.
I think this is valid - as a society, we’re out of balance, and people are feeling it.
In particular, we’re top-heavy.
But what does this mean? Read on to find out! I promise not to drag it out too much!
Sustainable Systems Thinking
One thing that has stuck with me from my undergrad in biomed, and later work in advanced control systems, is the idea that many dynamic systems are inherently unstable, at least in their highest potential states - and the only way to keep an unstable system under control is with the application of energy.
A particularly poignant example that highlights this is the act of running - reframed, it’s the act of constantly falling and catching oneself.
It can be jarring to think about, but the simple act of taking a step puts your body out of balance and you begin to pitch over - and the way to restore balance is to take a step forward.
We do this again and again and again as individuals as we navigate the world - and our society often acts the same way. To grow, individually and as a society, we have to change and try things; and when the current status becomes unsustainable we have to step forward and take right action.
Top-Heavy : When The Powerful Lead
”Top heavy” here means that the power (the most capable tech) is disproportionately owned, developed, and used by the individuals and institutions that already have capital (read: big tech), leaving the broad base of society without meaningful access, and in many cases without agency.
The generative technologies we are seeing released on a monthly or weekly cadence - updated models, integrations, capabilities, and competing releases - is moving faster than the consumers of the tools and services can consume in a reasonable fashion. It’s an arms race to demonstrate the most value, and - the leaders are moving faster than the foundation.
Right now they are shoring one another up and justifying the race with competition, but as they race - what is getting left behind?
We are.
As big tech races to chew up and spit out more data - all of that effort that and capital that could be spent on bettering quality of life for more people - seems to be going towards … not bettering quality of life.
One of the scariest things, to me, is that many of the tools and services that appear to give individuals power and agency - like the proliferation of generative services - are actually undermining understanding, adding to the noise, and often hide exploitive practices like data extraction and behavior modification.
Companies including Google and Meta have expressed intentions along the lines of embedding “preferred content” in generative responses. Without analytics to tell where this information came from, it’s nearly invisible - how can you as a human differentiate advice or fact from advertisement?
"Instead of placing power back in the hands of the public, a networked economy seems to exacerbate the worst features of industrial capitalism, and, in terms of the surveillance and control it exerts, reduces our political freedom."
— Darin Barney, Prometheus Wired
There is an important concept here of the primary beneficiary of a relationship or exchange - who stands to benefit the most?
I’ll get into this primary beneficiary topic more in future articles!
Balancing The Scales: Tech For A Better Future
People see technology moving faster than our ability to understand or control, and the possibility of great harm.
I see that that is where we are right now, as a society - top-heavy and perhaps ready to topple - that our only path to sustainability (other than cratering and stagnation!) is to to keep putting the next foot forward - not from the top, but from the bottom. To me this means balancing the tools that the big players wield with ones fitted to the hands and needs of the people.
I like to use the concept that AI is akin to fire, which one can consider the original “technology”. Fire has tremendous power for both creation and destruction - and it has been essential to humanity for millennia. We have evolved alongside this technology, and it has shaped us - and we it.
But the real compelling thing to me in this analogy is the classic mythology, Prometheus and all that - that fire must be in the hands of the people. Only by getting the technology in accessible form into the hands of the masses can we equalize things.
"Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things that one must steal, to be used against the established order."
— Pablo Picasso
As our digital world progresses, data is fuel, and AI is fire. We can do tremendous good if it is contained and leveraged for constructive purposes - or it could wipe us out.
Choice. Change. Community. Code.
So that’s where we are today. We must get people-first AI technologies into the hands of the people, to balance the equation. The people and organizations that are being impacted by the technologies need agency and control of the applications that impact their lives and the “fuel” they are providing.
Now - imagine a world where that analytics and discovery power of AI was in the hands of the individual. A future where all of that data, and the tools to distill it, were there for you, on your side, helping you live your best life on your own terms - not on theirs.
That’s what we’re doing at Oak, working with our good friends at Metagov and other organizations - putting ethics-first and human-first technology into the hands of the people.
One step at a time - until we find that balance.
-Tom Law
Organic Intelligence - this article was written for you by a human without AI-generated text, just spelling autocorrect. One human still finding their voice <3