Forget the Awe of Gen AI and ChatGPT, here’s the Real Story.
Supremacy by award-winning journalist Parmy Olson is the winner of the 2024 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award.
It’s a read that prizes open the seeds of the AI revolution and the mighty but oft-hidden news about the moral struggle and tussle between, in particular, Google and Open AI’s Sam Altman.
It’s a racy, seat-of-your-pants, tech-jargon-simplified-book in which you’ll easily conclude: how on earth did Olson manage the level of detail?
Most definitely they’ll be bidding rights for the book. Expect to see a film on it soon. It’s literally written for easy conversion to a film script.
Two take aways without spoiling your read. The so called heroes of the book framed as ‘effective altruists’ demonstrate a deep dismissal of morality in search of a greater goal. It’s enlightening, in as much as giving us an insight into a philosophy that has come to dominate tech, politics and leadership positions.
To do an altruistic thing you must be prepared to pursue that vision, knowing of the human costs and consequences. In this case that altruistic motivation is, and was, to create artificial general intelligence (AGI).
And the repercussions are that irrespective of the ethical, bias, and divisions AI has sown. The eye on the prize is being the first to create AGI and the billions of dollars that follow. It’s the land grab of the devil may care and then do as you please.
You could buy into the philosophy of the greater good to come, but tech e.g Facebook has shown us massive downsides. And in AI those downside are an avalanche.
The second revelation is no less a slack jaw one. AI’s training data is so unreflective of society, and largely drawn from known crawl wells, as well as anonymous data pools. Hence inevitably the output is skewed. The problem is these outputs e.g. bias and racism are being bedded down to be considered the norm.
Olson’s prose and use of metaphor allows us to see the scale of absurdity. It’s like releasing a pathogen into society to which there is no FDA approved way to neutralise its harm. As a society we’re so wazzed by tech (shiny thing syndrome) that as AI firms line up ever more tantalising, “look-what-I-can-do-mum” products, we’ve abandoned any safety values.
Does AI require more regulation? Was Pandora’s box opened without understanding the full implications? Should only a few companies be able to sink billions of dollars into this matrix and do want they want?
This and more allows you to draw your own conclusions. But one thing you’ll not waver on is that Supremacy is as electrifying as it is terrifying and the race is about to heat up further. Billions of dollars are set to poured into large language models.
In February 2025 AI nations meet at the Paris Summit. EU AI laws aside, it’s likely they’ll be a play for minimum oversight compared to the unfettering sums of capital in an unregulated market investors stand to make. Meanwhile AI for military advances sits outside any regulations.
A late Christmas filler, if you’re at a loss. I have my dear brother Dr Carlton Brown to thank, for the surprise. I’ve liked it so much I’m rereading it slowly.
I’ll be publishing an article in January on the impact of Gen AI on people of colour from interviewing key figures in the industry. I’ll post the link when it’s published. Early peer reviews look encouraging.
