TIME Keeps on Slipping into the Future
Your boy made the cover | The Future of Life Pro-Human Declaration is live | Come out to my Georgia Tech and Dallas First Baptist talks!
Your boy made the cover of TIME magazine! I suspect this is a sinister mass media conspiracy against me and all organic humanity. But still, pretty cool, right? Little piece of history right there.
Back in January, the journalist Andrew Chow contacted me to ask a few questions. Among the first was, “Did you see our recent ‘Person of the Year’ issue?”
“Yeah, man,” I replied. “The one with the tech oligarchs sitting on a steel beam. It pissed me off!”
As an arena rigger, I spent over fifteen years walking I-beams a hundred feet above hard concrete. That was our job. A real job. I know men who died doing it. And now these silver-spooners are stealing our valor?!
Chow was unfazed. He asked me to do a formal interview. It was conducted a couple of weeks later while I was in New Orleans with the Future of Life Institute. A few days later, the magazine sent a professional photographer out to Nashville for a quick shoot. After years of toiling in obscurity, it was all very strange.
I was never sure how the issue would end up. Chow warned that I might be featured alongside a radical environmentalist. I told him that was fine, I’m also an environmentalist, but perhaps for different reasons. My assumption was that I’d get quoted a few times and my mug would wind up in some Sgt. Pepper style collage.
The day the issue published online, I was flying back from my first in-person meeting with the Humans First team. Cheap headphones were on my ears. The Kills played at top volume. Suddenly the in-flight WiFi kicked in. My text app started blowing up—ding, ding, ding! The first one I saw was congratulations from Steve Bannon, whom I’d not talked to in a few weeks.
“What a journey, Joe. Well deserved.”
Steve doesn’t usually say that sort of stuff. Hell, he’d probably have me beat up for even implying he can be a nice guy. There was a link to TIME included in his text, but the WiFi sucked and no image would come in. The website wouldn’t load. What the hell was he talking about???
Then the cover came into view: “The People vs. AI.”
Per my request, the Brit photographer Benedict Evans had chosen the least goofy-looking picture of me. He had his work cut out for him.
You can read all the TIME profiles here. These include filmmaker and heroic AI slop-hater Justine Bateman; gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong; Christian pastor Michael Grayston; public service commissioner Alicia Johnson; tech dissident John Palowitch; environmental activists Jordan Harmon the Mackenzie Robert; the tech-skeptic nurse Hannah Drummond; and yes, yours truly.
There are millions of us. Probably hundreds of millions. You are not alone.
This is the video Evans recorded of me in his portable soul-uploading studio:
The Future of Life Pro-Human Declaration is Live
If you are pro-human, ADD your SIGNATURE!
From the preamble:
As companies race to develop and deploy AI systems, humanity faces a fork in the road. One path is a race to replace: humans replaced as creators, counselors, caregivers and companions, then in most jobs and decision-making roles, concentrating ever more power in unaccountable institutions and their machines. An influential fringe even advocates altering or replacing humanity itself. This race to replace poses risks to societal stability, national security, economic prosperity, civil liberties, privacy, and democratic governance. It also imperils the human experiences of childhood and family, faith, and community.
A remarkably broad coalition rejects this path, united by a simple conviction: artificial intelligence should serve humanity, not the reverse.
About a year ago, I met Max Tegmark for the first time. We discussed the ongoing AI race in a Catholic University parking lot in DC. He is a co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, and had a profound influence on my work. So it was an honor to meet him and has been a great pleasure getting to know him.
If you watch the War Room or have read Dark Aeon, you’ve seen my many references to the Future of Life Institute’s call to ban lethal autonomous weapons, to pause AI development, and to ban superintelligence (I signed the latter—with a caveat). You also may have seen the FLI film Slaughterbots, or maybe a few clips on the War Room. And of course, you may have read my respectful critiques of Tegmark’s concept of Life 3.0 in Dark Aeon.
Having gained so much perspective from the Future of Life Institute, I’m proud to have added a very small contribution to the creation of their Pro-Human Declaration. It’s unclear to me why a group of civilized, well-educated people would want me around, but I figure it must be like in the film Human Nature, where the guy raised as a chimpanzee gives his primate testimony.
hoot hoot hoot
The declaration itself is important on multiple levels. It’s the product of painstaking consensus among intellectuals and activists who have been thinking about the dangers and downsides of artificial intelligence for many years. These individuals ranged across a broad political spectrum from left to right. You could also imagine a perpendicular axis, with reasonable techno-optimists at the top and a few of us quasi-Luddites below.
That diversity was the source of plenty disagreements, sure, but it also kept us honest about what it means to be human.
Here are some of my favorite demands from the Pro-Human Declaration:
Defense of Family and Community Bonds: AI should not supplant the foundational relationships that give life meaning—family, friendship, faith communities, and local connections.
Child Protection: Companies must not be allowed to exploit children or undermine their wellbeing with AI interactions creating emotional attachment or leverage.
Pre-Deployment Safety Testing: Like drugs, chatbots must undergo pre-deployment testing for increased suicidal ideation, exacerbation of mental health disorders, escalation of acute crisis situations, and other known harms.
Bot-or-Not Labeling: AI-generated content that could reasonably be mistaken for human-generated must be clearly labeled as such.
No Behavioral Addiction: AIs should not cause addiction or compulsive use through manipulation, sycophantic validation, or attachment formation.
No AI Personhood: AI systems must not be granted legal personhood, and AI systems should not be designed such that they deserve personhood.
Liberty: AI must not curtail individual liberty, freedom of speech, religious practice, or association.
Data Rights and Privacy: People should have power over their personal data, with rights to access, correct, and delete it from active systems, AI training sets, and derived inferences.
Avoiding Enfeeblement: AI systems should be designed to empower, rather than enfeeble their users.
That last one is a little too optimistic for me—but hey, you can’t have it all. It was a privilege to ink my signature down in New Orleans.
From a normie perspective, it seems absurd to declare “Humans First!” Well, that’s the world we live in. No one can engineer a pro-human sentiment, and really, no one needs to. Most self-respecting people are naturally for their own species. But a little encouragement never hurts.
As with free speech, and freedom in general, the ideal position is that every human being has some say over a fundamentally anti-human technology—even one’s ideological opponents.
In an age of doomsday predictions and mass demoralization, such pro-human sentiments need to be defended and inspired.
Put humans first!!
Here’s coverage of the Pro-Human Declaration from The Verge, NBC, and AFP.
Most importantly, if you support a pro-human future—add your signature HERE!
TONIGHT, March 6 - I’m giving a talk at Georgia Tech — C’mon down!!
Georgia Institute of Technology | 6pm
Howey Building | Room L3
837 State St. NW
Atlanta, GA
30332
No admission fee! All are welcome.
RSVP here or just show up.
Also…
SUNDAY, March 8 - Dallas, TX
I’m giving my third talk at First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas. Come git’che an ole barnburner!
5:30 pm
First Baptist Worship Center
645 North St. Paul Street
Dallas, TX
75201
Doors are open! Saving a seat on the pew for you.
RSVP here or just show up.
My talk is an expansion of my article from last year:
Dark times. But there’s plenty of light to see us through.
Even the favored middle space! Congratulations Joe! Can't wait to read the issue.
I so hate I couldn't make it to Atlanta. It's only about 70 miles from me.
I know you'll be great.
BTW, it's great to see you writing here again. ♡