Faith and fear in technology

_{A micro-post}

_{Photo by note thanun on Unsplash}

As in the past, the current deep tech revolution (AI + biotech) throws up a familiar dynamic: faith in technology (techno-solutionism) and fear of technology (techno-phobia) are rising at the same time.

One the one hand, you have ‘effective accelerationism’ – techno-solutionism on steroids, with a double dash of ‘pessimism aversion’ (Mustafa Suleyman) and plain ol’ hubris – arguably epitomised by ‘The Techno-Optimist Manifesto from Andreessen Horowitz‘.

On the other, you have doomsayers, ranging from big players at the top of their fields (e.g. Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio) to a good chunk of the population rightly fearing job displacement, dehumanising use cases and, in the extreme cases, the very disappearance of humanity in tech-apocalyptic scenarios.

In short, fear of, and faith in tech clash and collide in dissonant ways in the discourse. The challenge, as ever, is to pick up on the Signal in the noise. #discernment