Thanks Manoel for sharing your views! I enjoyed reading about your perspective, and I'm glad also to have learned about Vertesi et al.'s interesting paper via your blog post.
I agree that it can be unhelpful for "Responsible AI" broadly to center on a position that AI is a "scam" or completely ineffectual. AI is effective at some tasks (like coding) while ineffective at others.
However, I also noted that you mentioned disagreement with some specific authors and arguments, as well as with "La Résistance (and the academics most attuned to it)", the "opposition", "intelligentsia of the AI Resistance", "the current plot". I was a bit confused about the throughline between your specific critiques of specific arguments against AI leading to a general criticism of the "resistance" or the "opposition".
For example, is it clear that the "opposition" or "La Résistance" adheres to what you attribute to be the "current plot" or the arguments you specifically contested (of the AI Con or "normal technology")? It's not clear to me that the "opposition" is coherent in general, and is at best a collection of wildly different distinct voices and contingents, certainly where may be repeating talking points.
I think you're responding broadly to patterns in the discourse where some voices (especially with platform) share their positions that you disagree with, that you mentioned.
However, I found it confusing who was the intended "you" mentioned in the post, and I wonder if more clarity around the specific object of your critiques would be helpful. I'm also not really sure what "this path" refers to or "opposition following this path refers to", is it specifically the idea that AI is a "normal technology" no different than any other?
I'd love to sign up to join the intelligentsia of the AI Resistance of which you speak :)
Lastly, I agree with you that the job is to reshape the project of AI.
But I wanted to go back to where you started on the post, and make a pitch that strategic awareness of the politico-economic project of AI is needed to reshape the project of AI (and different from the "AI is a scam" arguments you critiqued).
I think that the important things you mention at the end about open-source models, democratic oversight, government involvement, are all 100% politico-economic infrastructure. I'd go so far as to say that the current politico-economic project of AI is exactly why we don't have these nice things you mentioned. The current politico-economic organization is so reliant on venture capital's hype cycle and selling a vision of necessary scaling that doesn't match up with the reality of what's needed to achieve impact on the ground. These nice things (democratic oversight) are against the entrenched interest of big AI developers.
To be a bit more concrete, I think there's space for a "normcore" and technology-centered La Resistance that also recognizes the politico-economic project of AI. I would argue we can start with a couple premises:
- AI models are good or really good at some things, but they're bad at some things too.
- AI companies have huge compute costs, and need to sell hard to convince folks they could eventually cover those costs. The compute and energy costs are so intensive (because the big companies have huge valuations and they don't face any pressure to become more compute-efficient) that this in turn affects broader swathes of the economy, including giving various CEOs cover to do mass layoffs as a short-term myopic thing.
From there, a measured perspective acknowledges that both these things are simultaneously true. For example:
- AI models are not good at everything out of the box. But a lot of companies need the world to believe that they are good at everything and magical, in order to make enough money to cover heavy compute costs, and so people stop protesting their data center builds.
- There's a lot of ways to achieve important impact with AI. Some are more efficient than others. Some ways are PR for companies. Companies starting leaderboards to reward employees for using the most AI is not the most efficient way to achieve impact with AI, and is probably so that they can brag about "innovation".
More importantly - I'm guessing here - but I would peg the modal academic in responsible AI, who is not explicitly a critical theorist, somewhere in this middle ground rather than at these extremes ("AI is a scam"). I'd actually love to see a survey or a more comprehensive poll of what people are thinking.
Thank you for sharing your thoughtful perspective!
I agree that more careful strategizing is needed to realize responsible improvements from AI. I'd love to see more community discussion like yours hashing out these difficult but crucial questions for moving forward. I think it's even more helpful for us all to be super precise about what exactly we disagree with; it's the only way out of the current schisms.
Thanks so much for the very thoughtful comment! I think you are right about me being too loose with “La Résistance.” I’m definitely not trying to criticize responsible AI as a whole, and indeed, I’d agree that opposition to “the project” is a messy coalition. I tried not to make my blog post too personal, and to make this whole ordeal a point about recurring rhetorical patterns rather than about representing any individual person’s stance. I also think your “normcore La Résistance” framing is basically the position I’m trying to get to: AI systems are useful for some things and bad at others, even when they are good, implementing them irresponsibly may be bad for society.
But if you look at how people are resisting tech, my point is that they are drawing on a theory (and here I quoted "The AI Con" explicitly) that everything is just a scam. E.g., if you look at user reception for Attie on Bluesky, an initiative that could help people have more intentional feeds, the response was basically "we don't even care to know what this is about---blocked."
Re: what people in Responsible AI actually believe, my guess is you’re right that the modal person is much closer to this measured middle ground. But I’m less convinced this is the stance animating people engaged in resisting the AI Project outside academic discussion. There, I typically see blanket refusal, which is better aligned with the framing "it's all a scam."
Thanks Manoel for sharing your views! I enjoyed reading about your perspective, and I'm glad also to have learned about Vertesi et al.'s interesting paper via your blog post.
I agree that it can be unhelpful for "Responsible AI" broadly to center on a position that AI is a "scam" or completely ineffectual. AI is effective at some tasks (like coding) while ineffective at others.
However, I also noted that you mentioned disagreement with some specific authors and arguments, as well as with "La Résistance (and the academics most attuned to it)", the "opposition", "intelligentsia of the AI Resistance", "the current plot". I was a bit confused about the throughline between your specific critiques of specific arguments against AI leading to a general criticism of the "resistance" or the "opposition".
For example, is it clear that the "opposition" or "La Résistance" adheres to what you attribute to be the "current plot" or the arguments you specifically contested (of the AI Con or "normal technology")? It's not clear to me that the "opposition" is coherent in general, and is at best a collection of wildly different distinct voices and contingents, certainly where may be repeating talking points.
I think you're responding broadly to patterns in the discourse where some voices (especially with platform) share their positions that you disagree with, that you mentioned.
However, I found it confusing who was the intended "you" mentioned in the post, and I wonder if more clarity around the specific object of your critiques would be helpful. I'm also not really sure what "this path" refers to or "opposition following this path refers to", is it specifically the idea that AI is a "normal technology" no different than any other?
I'd love to sign up to join the intelligentsia of the AI Resistance of which you speak :)
Lastly, I agree with you that the job is to reshape the project of AI.
But I wanted to go back to where you started on the post, and make a pitch that strategic awareness of the politico-economic project of AI is needed to reshape the project of AI (and different from the "AI is a scam" arguments you critiqued).
I think that the important things you mention at the end about open-source models, democratic oversight, government involvement, are all 100% politico-economic infrastructure. I'd go so far as to say that the current politico-economic project of AI is exactly why we don't have these nice things you mentioned. The current politico-economic organization is so reliant on venture capital's hype cycle and selling a vision of necessary scaling that doesn't match up with the reality of what's needed to achieve impact on the ground. These nice things (democratic oversight) are against the entrenched interest of big AI developers.
To be a bit more concrete, I think there's space for a "normcore" and technology-centered La Resistance that also recognizes the politico-economic project of AI. I would argue we can start with a couple premises:
- AI models are good or really good at some things, but they're bad at some things too.
- AI companies have huge compute costs, and need to sell hard to convince folks they could eventually cover those costs. The compute and energy costs are so intensive (because the big companies have huge valuations and they don't face any pressure to become more compute-efficient) that this in turn affects broader swathes of the economy, including giving various CEOs cover to do mass layoffs as a short-term myopic thing.
From there, a measured perspective acknowledges that both these things are simultaneously true. For example:
- AI models are not good at everything out of the box. But a lot of companies need the world to believe that they are good at everything and magical, in order to make enough money to cover heavy compute costs, and so people stop protesting their data center builds.
- There's a lot of ways to achieve important impact with AI. Some are more efficient than others. Some ways are PR for companies. Companies starting leaderboards to reward employees for using the most AI is not the most efficient way to achieve impact with AI, and is probably so that they can brag about "innovation".
More importantly - I'm guessing here - but I would peg the modal academic in responsible AI, who is not explicitly a critical theorist, somewhere in this middle ground rather than at these extremes ("AI is a scam"). I'd actually love to see a survey or a more comprehensive poll of what people are thinking.
Thank you for sharing your thoughtful perspective!
I agree that more careful strategizing is needed to realize responsible improvements from AI. I'd love to see more community discussion like yours hashing out these difficult but crucial questions for moving forward. I think it's even more helpful for us all to be super precise about what exactly we disagree with; it's the only way out of the current schisms.
Thanks so much for the very thoughtful comment! I think you are right about me being too loose with “La Résistance.” I’m definitely not trying to criticize responsible AI as a whole, and indeed, I’d agree that opposition to “the project” is a messy coalition. I tried not to make my blog post too personal, and to make this whole ordeal a point about recurring rhetorical patterns rather than about representing any individual person’s stance. I also think your “normcore La Résistance” framing is basically the position I’m trying to get to: AI systems are useful for some things and bad at others, even when they are good, implementing them irresponsibly may be bad for society.
But if you look at how people are resisting tech, my point is that they are drawing on a theory (and here I quoted "The AI Con" explicitly) that everything is just a scam. E.g., if you look at user reception for Attie on Bluesky, an initiative that could help people have more intentional feeds, the response was basically "we don't even care to know what this is about---blocked."
Re: what people in Responsible AI actually believe, my guess is you’re right that the modal person is much closer to this measured middle ground. But I’m less convinced this is the stance animating people engaged in resisting the AI Project outside academic discussion. There, I typically see blanket refusal, which is better aligned with the framing "it's all a scam."