I feel like I these doom prognostications were also written during the industrial revolution, the invention of electricity, the invention of television, the invention of the internet, ...
We've turned out okay.
We've turned out okay.
> A few weeks ago, The Argument Editor-in-Chief Jerusalem Demsas asked me to write an essay about the claim that AI systems would take all of our jobs within 18 months. My initial reaction was … no?
[...]
> The problem is whether we will degrade our own capabilities in the presence of new machines. We are so fixated on how technology will outskill us that we miss the many ways that we can deskill ourselves.
[..]
> Students, scientists, and anyone else who lets AI do the writing for them will find their screens full of words and their minds emptied of thought.
"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem [275b] to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise."
Some of the best thinking across history - euclid,newton,einstein - happened in the pre-computer era. So, let alone AI, even computers are not necessary. Pen, paper and some imagination/experimentation were sufficient.
Some in tech are fear mongering to seek attention.
Second, Socrates was generally arrogant in stories. That attitude you see there was not special disdain to reading, it was more off his general "I am better then everyone else anyway" attitude.