In the last couple of years, there's been a significant backlash against AI – and, to a lesser extent, robotics/automation.
Are there any other new/future technologies that could see similar public opposition, having previously been widely regarded as desirable?
Backlash against future technologies
Re: Backlash against future technologies
The blow back is entirely reasonable. It's not like nuclear energy where the oil lobby seized a niche group with misinformation. Generative AI legitimately has problems that the developers and governments are not addressing, and the fact AI is so widely supported in China where they both deploy and regulate it suggests it's entirely the fault of they sort of American techbro will-to-power at all costs that's why the attitude towards AI shifted.
The fact the arts were affected wasn't even a deal breaker outright, it's just the total absolute lack of empathy for the arts, constant fucking up basic attempts to justify it ("If we can't steal books, we can't build the technology," and I'm not even embellishing it to make it sound worse, that's verbatim what a bunch of AI company execs have said), the whole imbroglio with data centers built too close to population centers
It's a fucking mess and the fact CHINA did it right is honestly embarrassing. Then again, they ARE communist (in name; social-corporatist in practice). America seems determined more to leave those negatively affected by automation out to rot. Zero discussion on how to keep those left jobless or affected by AI out of poverty, zero safety nets, zero basic income— there's not even a teasing ATTEMPT at a large scale discussion on LOCAL levels. "We gotta start discussing basic income"— we gotta start discussing it 5 years ago, it's too late now. That well's been poisoned something fierce, and many won't even take basic income at this point. Nothing less than robot communism honestly is going to settle many people down.
Which begs the question: if you threaten someone with death every day, and they threaten to hit you back, what right do you have to be offended?
AI didn't have to be this controversial; blame the leaders for fucking it all up with sadomasochistic levels of greed and insularity. Generative AI is what is controversial, and it's the fault of those leaders if that splashes into other kinds of AI. Triply so if all the non-white countries get AI abundance because China sold it properly first.
The one tech I expect to be controversial without any hint of doubt: gene modding.
The third world is going to lead the charge, India already apparently has nationalists wanting to design babies with fair skin, blue eyes, blond hair; and whatnot. Similarly some in China and Brazil want to. The Western world will never let that happen here, because we've decided that's eugenics.
The funny thing is, the more advanced tech gets, the cheaper gene modding will be.
The bogstandard sci-fi "genetic opera" trope is that the wealthy will design their babies to be perfect, and governments will design supersoldiers to defend them, leaving the rest of us to just exist
For many reasons that's not the trajectory we're on
In fact I fully expect fear mongering and pogroms against gene-modded humans, especially in more superstitious areas (Bible Belt in America, Quran Belt in the middle East and Africa); when you can engineer a baby for under a grand, imagine Facebook rumors that activating certain genes leaves a 100% fatal genetic disease that can spread airborne, but also through contact and sexual intercourse.
This already happened on liberal progressive enlightened Reddit after Lulu and Nana back in 2018— loads of commenters saying that we couldn't know if the two babies had been mutated by accident to be able to spread turbo-diseases if they spread their genes and thus they had to be killed before that happened for the collective greater good
Now imagine Boomers, turbo-organic types, and religious nutcases thinking any amount of gene modding, even to do things like deactivate cancer cells, turns you into a giant living demon-possessed cancer cell.
A lesser one, in fact one that I thought of while doing some work with Babylon Today which involved matrix simulations, was that when we do have more advanced simulators and holodeck level tech, how many people will violently demand to opt out of being simulated?
Many of the more spiritual and artistic already don't like the idea of being replaced or mimicked by AI, so the thought of, say, simulating 1980s London to meet a bunch of rowdy anarcho-punks in concert might not be allowed if those same punks, now old and withered but still rowdy, threaten to firebomb data centers simulating them.
Maybe at some future point it just becomes too advanced to not be feasible, but earlier on, I can't imagine a lot of the past and now-present will be free to visit. Whether because the persons depicted don't want to be simulated and AI-generated for various reasons (probably most often the matter of consent), or because of copyright and corporate legalism.
So simulating 1969 to visit Woodstock might not be as accurate as some hope; for a good long while at least.
The fact the arts were affected wasn't even a deal breaker outright, it's just the total absolute lack of empathy for the arts, constant fucking up basic attempts to justify it ("If we can't steal books, we can't build the technology," and I'm not even embellishing it to make it sound worse, that's verbatim what a bunch of AI company execs have said), the whole imbroglio with data centers built too close to population centers
It's a fucking mess and the fact CHINA did it right is honestly embarrassing. Then again, they ARE communist (in name; social-corporatist in practice). America seems determined more to leave those negatively affected by automation out to rot. Zero discussion on how to keep those left jobless or affected by AI out of poverty, zero safety nets, zero basic income— there's not even a teasing ATTEMPT at a large scale discussion on LOCAL levels. "We gotta start discussing basic income"— we gotta start discussing it 5 years ago, it's too late now. That well's been poisoned something fierce, and many won't even take basic income at this point. Nothing less than robot communism honestly is going to settle many people down.
Which begs the question: if you threaten someone with death every day, and they threaten to hit you back, what right do you have to be offended?
AI didn't have to be this controversial; blame the leaders for fucking it all up with sadomasochistic levels of greed and insularity. Generative AI is what is controversial, and it's the fault of those leaders if that splashes into other kinds of AI. Triply so if all the non-white countries get AI abundance because China sold it properly first.
The one tech I expect to be controversial without any hint of doubt: gene modding.
The third world is going to lead the charge, India already apparently has nationalists wanting to design babies with fair skin, blue eyes, blond hair; and whatnot. Similarly some in China and Brazil want to. The Western world will never let that happen here, because we've decided that's eugenics.
The funny thing is, the more advanced tech gets, the cheaper gene modding will be.
The bogstandard sci-fi "genetic opera" trope is that the wealthy will design their babies to be perfect, and governments will design supersoldiers to defend them, leaving the rest of us to just exist
For many reasons that's not the trajectory we're on
In fact I fully expect fear mongering and pogroms against gene-modded humans, especially in more superstitious areas (Bible Belt in America, Quran Belt in the middle East and Africa); when you can engineer a baby for under a grand, imagine Facebook rumors that activating certain genes leaves a 100% fatal genetic disease that can spread airborne, but also through contact and sexual intercourse.
This already happened on liberal progressive enlightened Reddit after Lulu and Nana back in 2018— loads of commenters saying that we couldn't know if the two babies had been mutated by accident to be able to spread turbo-diseases if they spread their genes and thus they had to be killed before that happened for the collective greater good
Now imagine Boomers, turbo-organic types, and religious nutcases thinking any amount of gene modding, even to do things like deactivate cancer cells, turns you into a giant living demon-possessed cancer cell.
A lesser one, in fact one that I thought of while doing some work with Babylon Today which involved matrix simulations, was that when we do have more advanced simulators and holodeck level tech, how many people will violently demand to opt out of being simulated?
Many of the more spiritual and artistic already don't like the idea of being replaced or mimicked by AI, so the thought of, say, simulating 1980s London to meet a bunch of rowdy anarcho-punks in concert might not be allowed if those same punks, now old and withered but still rowdy, threaten to firebomb data centers simulating them.
Maybe at some future point it just becomes too advanced to not be feasible, but earlier on, I can't imagine a lot of the past and now-present will be free to visit. Whether because the persons depicted don't want to be simulated and AI-generated for various reasons (probably most often the matter of consent), or because of copyright and corporate legalism.
So simulating 1969 to visit Woodstock might not be as accurate as some hope; for a good long while at least.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future