A founder of Midjourney tweeted that in 2009 he saw a “famous scientist” tell “a room of two hundred kids” that in 20 years, computers would exceed human intelligence. One child asked what would happen—would they kill us, or perhaps make pets of us—and the scientist declares “We will become the machines!” The kids are all horrified and say nothing for the rest of the talk.
Quite a few of the comments say things like “we need to embrace change” and “you can’t stop evolution” and “we’re already machines” and so on. Even the original anecdote concludes with the scientist harrumphing that “people” want to solve problems without any big changes happening.
What baffles me: no-one points out that this wasn’t a roomful of adults being short-sighted, it was a roomful of children who felt instinctive unease at what the mad grown-up was saying. Even if it is humanity’s destiny to merge with technology, I find it bizarre that the reluctance of a group of children to embrace this declaration, is treated as a morality tale about human inflexibility.
A founder of Midjourney tweeted that in 2009 he saw a “famous scientist” tell “a room of two hundred kids” that in 20 years, computers would exceed human intelligence. One child asked what would happen—would they kill us, or perhaps make pets of us—and the scientist declares “We will become the machines!” The kids are all horrified and say nothing for the rest of the talk.
Quite a few of the comments say things like “we need to embrace change” and “you can’t stop evolution” and “we’re already machines” and so on. Even the original anecdote concludes with the scientist harrumphing that “people” want to solve problems without any big changes happening.
What baffles me: no-one points out that this wasn’t a roomful of adults being short-sighted, it was a roomful of children who felt instinctive unease at what the mad grown-up was saying. Even if it is humanity’s destiny to merge with technology, I find it bizarre that the reluctance of a group of children to embrace this declaration, is treated as a morality tale about human inflexibility.