With the internet and social media, we created tools that enabled the destructive, ruthless, and non-empathetic individuals in our societies to share harmful ideas, to connect themselves with others, and to spread their hate. In the past the lack of connection protected us but also made it hard for marginalized groups. But it was harder for those bad actors to spread like in a well-vaccinated society. With AI and AI agents, we now give those few people another tool to amplify their destructiveness.
And as a society that has proven multiple times that it isn’t capable of handling such fast changes well (look at the idea to solve the problem by forbidding access to the tools for the youth instead of actually doing something), this is a big threat for all of us.
And yes, it is also true that the same tools (excluding AI), for a beautiful moment in time, also enabled marginalized people to connect, to fight for their rights, and to build important communities. It made the world a better place. But now it tips the other direction again. We have to develop solutions for this kind of change; it will always happen. Solutions to protect our communities, our society.
I believe that the majority of people aren’t inherently selfish, that they are good, and that they want the best for their peers. But there are always those who exploit it, those who don’t want to handle that there are people who are different. We as the majority need to develop solutions and checks and balances. I don’t have THE solution. I don’t think there is one solution to fix it all.
We need to develop a whole immune system. But one good first step would be to prevent people from becoming too wealthy, because you can only become so wealthy by being destructive, ruthless, and non-empathetic. And now think again about who owns the tools.
This was a thread on mastodon: https://chaos.social/@leah/116091155438293318