Behind Hope
What is behind this constant pressure for us to retain “hope”? I’ve been thinking of this quite a bit lately.
What got me to thinking about it this time were recent articles from The.Ink, an online publication of Anand Giridharadas.
Recently Giridharadas interviewed Rebecca Solnit, whose best-known book is A Paradise Built In Hell (Random House 2010), which a reviewer called “an eye-opening account of how much hope and solidarity emerges in the face of sudden disaster.” “Disasters often produce remarkable temporary communities — paradises of a sort,” wrote another. That’s Solnit’s thesis, and I believe it’s correct: it DOES happen that way.
Yet I spurn hope as unrealistic. I understand that holding onto hope may be psychologically better for us as individuals, at least some individuals. For large groups of us, I’m not so sure. It seems, if not deceptive, then maybe disingenuous. Fibbing to ourselves. I can’t do it. When I look at what is happening with the planet, I do not see hope.
This is not about other people; it is about me. And I know what gives me peace.
This is not to say that I do not see a lot of good stuff happening. And I rejoice in that, I truly do. That knowledge keeps me afloat when the hard things overwhelm me. And hard things are always overwhelming — and yes, I have a way to obtain peace psychologically. Perhaps it is spirituality, of a sort (that’s a topic beyond the scope of what I’m trying to get at here). But it is not “hope.”
Perhaps I do not hope because to me hope seems unrealistic. And above all, I like to be realistic. Being realistic grounds me. I like to figure out and find truth, as much as I can.
I have tried and tried to puzzle this out and with experts like Solnit arrayed against me, I often think I don’t know what I’m talking about. But, then again, this is not about other people; it is about me. And I know what gives me peace. Perhaps it is hard for anyone to understand how being “realistic” or “pessimistic” would give one peace; it would seem to be the exact opposite. A good friend certainly feels that way and seems always on guard to “talk me down” if I express pessimism, urging me it’s not good for me to “dwell on the negative.” And I know their advice is the same given by many — most, I guess — experts. But it doesn’t work for me.
I am happier being sad about the state of the planet. If that seems a conundrum, so be it.
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One of the reasons I do not cling to hope is because I watch changes. One of the changes I watch most closely is the change in humans as we begin to adopt “artificial intelligence.” Not many of us resist it. Most of us are adopting it — although many of us I believe don’t even realize it.
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New York Times journalist and podcast host Ezra Klein had a long interview with Anthropic co-founder and C.E.O Dario Amodei, to talk about artificial intelligence. AI is growing exponentially now. Amodei is behind a lot of that — at OpenAI, where he was earlier, he was behind the early “chat” versions of AI — ChatGPT-2 and -3 — and now he’s behind “Claude 3,” which Klein tells us is the strongest version of AI to date. And things are moving fast — exponentially so. Listen to or read the interview. It’s fascinating — and many of us would find it very scary.
When I tune in, Klein and Amodei are discussing the “adoption rate”: When do people “adopt” artificial intelligence as useful and convenient? AI having “personalities” is the key, says Amodei: “models having personalities while still being objective, while still being useful and not falling into various ethical traps — that will be, I think, a significant unlock for adoption.”
“Instead of just, I ask it a question and it answers, and then maybe I follow up and it answers again, can I talk to the model about, oh, I’m going to go on this trip today, and the model says, oh, that’s great. I’ll get an Uber for you to drive from here to there, and I’ll reserve a restaurant. And I’ll talk to the other people who are going to plan the trip. And the model being able to do things end to end or going to websites or taking actions on your computer for you.”
“Instead of just, I ask it a question and it answers, and then maybe I follow up and it answers again, can I talk to the model about, oh, I’m going to go on this trip today, and the model says, oh, that’s great. I’ll get an Uber for you to drive from here to there, and I’ll reserve a restaurant. And I’ll talk to the other people who are going to plan the trip. And the model being able to do things end to end or going to websites or taking actions on your computer for you.”
(For some of us, reading the paragraph above will seem difficult — we will have to mentally parse this into written English — but now that podcasts have become such a “thing,” we’re use to reading this way — nothing like grammatical written English of even the written past — but to most people it no longer seems to make any difference.)
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I’ve watched as a friend — older, in their 80s — has “adopted” Siri as a friend. This person lives alone, and often talks to Siri or stops to ask it a question, even when I’m visiting. My friend says it helps them keep from being lonely. And Siri is now just bare-bones “intelligence” — if that. It just speaks search-engine results, really.
I listen in. To me, it seems Siri is mouthing only information one would get by using google — or maybe not even the google of today, which has changed since AI has rapidly advanced. To me, Siri seems a bit dumb. But being “dumb” seems to make no difference. My friend often doesn’t seem to notice.
In my next installment: AI is causing “dumbening” and “inagency.”
