The danger we now face is of a passage from the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity, from a naive and flawed sort of democratic republic to a confused and cynical sort of fascist oligarchy.
Timothy Snyder, p. 84
I read Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny (originally published in 2017) over the weekend. It’s upsetting (but not surprising) to see just how many “Lessons From the 20th Century” we haven’t learned – and how much worse the conditions are for liberal-progressive democracies now compared to 2017. One major difference I see is how that representative of many of the major tech companies – for better or worse powerful institutions in the US – are failing Snyder’s lessons, or are actively supportive of Trump and MAGA. The US is frighteningly closer to a reactionary oligarchy than eight years ago. First moments of the second Trump administration only add to the worry.
However, my worry is not just the reelection of Trump and the victory of MAGA. It’s also the largely unchecked rise of generative AI like ChatGPT in one overlooked aspect: Too many people uncritically, excitedly use it to create content. I fear this adds new complexity or poses a different type of danger to Snyder’s point “Be kind to language”. When more language, art, content in (social) media is generated – instead of written/thought/spoken – it becomes even easier to not be critical-conscious of the way we use language. Generative machine learning can be a useful tool, but if we’re not careful, it can destroy more than energy resources.
Thoughts?