Why are some afraid of technology?

fuzzybuddy

fuzzybuddy

SF VIP
Location
The Sticks, Northeast PA.
Online, there's a flack about the effect of AI (Artificial Intelligence). Some see AI as the downfall of mankind. When I was a kid, you had 1 landline phone in the house. After school, girls used to gab for hours, and supposedly this had all kinds of bad influences. TV was new, and of course, if you watched too much TV, you'd go blind, or it rotted out kids' brains. Cordless phones zapped your brain with all kinds of killing radiation. The internet turned us into antisocial nut cases. Then came AI. There seems to be a trend of some being afraid of technology. Granted any new technology presents some danger, but that's generally overcome by the usefulness of the technology.
Why are some afraid of technology?
 

There is this:

"Life is a series of next things, and you'd do well to be ready for that." ~~from Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher

But then again:

"...I'm not as afraid of AI as I am fearful of bad people who will use AI better than good people. This requires that all of us think carefully about what gets made." ~~from Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher
 
fuzzybuddy said:
Online, there's a flack about the effect of AI (Artificial Intelligence). Some see AI as the downfall of mankind. When I was a kid, you had 1 landline phone in the house. After school, girls used to gab for hours, and supposedly this had all kinds of bad influences. TV was new, and of course, if you watched too much TV, you'd go blind, or it rotted out kids' brains. Cordless phones zapped your brain with all kinds of killing radiation. The internet turned us into antisocial nut cases. Then came AI. There seems to be a trend of some being afraid of technology. Granted any new technology presents some danger, but that's generally overcome by the usefulness of the technology.
Why are some afraid of technology?
Click to expand...

Ignorance. That and being susceptible to believing in fanciful predictions. I mean that in the nicest possible way.

We're still waiting for the paperless office we were promised in 1950's sci-fi novels and adopted in the 1980's as being possible.

AI will change society. It will change the job market. People fear change, being more comfortable with what they know. But change is inevitable.

Social Media has changed society, online shopping is destroying High Streets and malls. It's just change.
 

AI is wonderful but I fear it will destroy the urge to be creative. If a machine will do it as well, why bother to do it ourselves. It’s great if we’re talking about a dish washer that saves us physical labor but AI does brain work and without the constant stimulation - the urge to be creative - it will grow dull.

Mankind is inherently lazy. Couches have been around forever but the couch potato is the product of labor saving devices.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
Online, there's a flack about the effect of AI (Artificial Intelligence). Some see AI as the downfall of mankind. When I was a kid, you had 1 landline phone in the house. After school, girls used to gab for hours, and supposedly this had all kinds of bad influences. TV was new, and of course, if you watched too much TV, you'd go blind, or it rotted out kids' brains. Cordless phones zapped your brain with all kinds of killing radiation. The internet turned us into antisocial nut cases. Then came AI. There seems to be a trend of some being afraid of technology. Granted any new technology presents some danger, but that's generally overcome by the usefulness of the technology.
Why are some afraid of technology?
Click to expand...
Because it can be hard to tell the bad actors from the good. We are already flooded with false information.
 
Billions of $$$ are being invested in AI tech. In about every area of life we can think of. It is changing the way we access our information, perceive our world/reality, and becoming part of our daily lives in a physical way / robotics. There is a major transformation occurring in how we see our world, and it is frightening in many ways. Some fear when AI gets smarter than the smartest human, we won't be able to know what it is doing. If we have given it agency it could act in ways that we cannot control. Safeguards are already being made law in some countries.

I just watched a video, released a year ago, that explains how we are already involved in an alternate reality. Deepfake reality is on the rise. Not only pictures, memes, and videos, but many ways it is fooling us. That is scary. I don't have any answers, but I do feel like we have to put competent people in charge of creating, and protecting us, the best possible way, whatever that might be. Right now, another thread here on SF is discussing using dead actors for new movies. Their image and voice can be made into anything we can imagine! Ethical? I think our moral and ethical values are also going to change because of AI.

 
I was wondering about this a few weeks ago and went down a deep rabbit hole about the printing press. Of course it was a different era and different type of technology but many feared it.

"As with AI today, people had concerns around the risk of misinformation and propaganda, problems of bias and prejudice, and the threat of censorship with the easy availability of relatively cheap printing presses. The printing press was criticized for producing too many books of low quality and distracting people from the pursuit of true knowledge.

The Gutenberg press faced a backlash – the introduction of the printing press and mass production of books challenged the control of manuscripts by religious and secular authorities. Critics were concerned that the printing press would put monks and scribes out of work, as well as threaten the monopoly and influence of the literate elite. For instance, in 1476, a group of scribes in Paris attacked and destroyed a printing press set up by Johann Heynlin, a German scholar and printer. They feared the new technology endangered their livelihood and status and felt threatened by its potential to undermine their role as custodians of knowledge and culture."

https://quocirca.com/content/the-gutenberg-revolution-how-the-printing-press-shaped-humanity-and-what-it-means-for-ai/#:~:text=For instance, in 1476, a,custodians of knowledge and culture.
 
officerripley said:
There is this:

"Life is a series of next things, and you'd do well to be ready for that." ~~from Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher

But then again:

"...I'm not as afraid of AI as I am fearful of bad people who will use AI better than good people. This requires that all of us think carefully about what gets made." ~~from Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher
Click to expand...
A lot of tech has changed in my life, and there's no point in being afraid of everything new. Yet there's also no realism in being Pollyannic. Some perhaps unexpected uses of online digital tech, by 'bad people', have included email spam and unwanted advertising; computer viruses/malware; social-media bullying, trolls, stalkers, doxing, and fraudsters; identity theft; and large-system hacking. Nice, decent people don't do that stuff, but it's an unintended consequence of tech development.
 
It isn't ordinary people that are afraid of AI but rather the small minority who understand how and why that might happen are warning the rest of us. Not emotionally afraid but have described at length in simple logical terms why, how, when it is dangerous and might happen. The vast majority of people today cannot even code any kind of software much less understand how AI is structured that is less obvious even to most of those that do. Not that some ordinary folk could if they studied how, but rather like much of complex science and technology that others have created, don't need to in order to use such in their lives.

For instance almost everyone today uses microwave ovens without understanding the electromagnetic science it is based on or the material and design science to build such appliances. People aren't afraid of microwave ovens but are aware it has dangers like fire. People also may emotionally fear potentially dangerous unknown things they don't understand. And people may also fear things when others with agendas manipulate the masses with supposed fears either true or not, they don't have knowledge to understand.

As for new technology before AI, all of us have strong logical reasons to fear most modern weapons of war. But less so a range of other things like transistor radios. People aren't afraid of dot matrix printers or calculators either and much more. So categorizing "afraid of technology" in broad ways is an over generalization and rather ought be discussed narrowly in specific ways. It is also true some people may not "like" to use things they have to make more effort to learn how to use like when VCR's arose because they are too lazy or language limited to read user manuals, but that is different than saying they are "afraid".

Thus the OP's question was posed somewhat awkwardly though the rest of us tend to understand what he was meaning. It is true as more and more consumer use technology evolves, that it can become overwhelming complex to even learn how to use. My new Sony a6700 camera is very much in that category as are plenty of applications and software tools like Excel.

I use a lot of that stuff in part because I can just read documentation with some hands on experimentation to learn and train myself without needing formal instruction. That is how I stayed at the top of my field versus envious others who would have had to attend formal schooling. But there are some things beyond my own abilities to understand that I accept I never will like quantum dynamic theory. We all have limitation thresholds that is not just about raw intelligence but rather the structure of learning we have built up in our brains.
 
Even before AI photoshop programs allowed people to edit news clips in ways that basically were lies, misrepresentations of what actually happened. If all AI produced items were required to be labeled as such it wouldn't concern me as much. Can't be more detailed about misuses without breaking a rule so I'll leave it at that.
 
Last edited:
As long as AI is kept for doing good, then that is fine,
but unfortunately, as we know, some power crazy person,
will use it for criminal purposes.

Now that AI is expected to takeover most tasks that people
do, at the moment, this raises the question, what is the purpose
of humans on Earth, are we an experiment, to see how far we can
sustain life and be successful, with education etc?

The same question could be applied to all kinds of life on Earth.

Mike.
 
People are ranting about "AI" taking over the world-horrible, horrible, horrible. There's images of a Schwarzenegger type robot enslaving mankind. Almost any tool a man can make could be a weapon, as well as having nonhostile use. It's not the technology, but the ill- use of that technology, which is dangerous.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
People are ranting about "AI" taking over the world-horrible, horrible, horrible. There's images of a Schwarzenegger type robot enslaving mankind. Almost any tool a man can make could be a weapon, as well as having nonhostile use. It's not the technology, but the ill- use of that technology, which is dangerous.
Click to expand...
That's true. Still, I do not like the unforeseen (mis)uses of online tech that I mentioned in post #14. But I don't tie myself up in knots by dwelling on the topic daily.

About advancing technology, an example: I'm glad that the A-Bomb was utilized in human conflict only two times.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top