The Economy of Promises: AI Hype Risks Repeating Past Failures

Addiction Economy Thought for Today - one thing we know about the innovation development 'Economy of Promises' has so far turned out to be hype and fails to deliver. Is there any reason to think AI won't be the same? Andrew Maynard in an excellent article below is convincingly unconvinced about the need to fund AI because it will allegedly 'solve climate change' by diverting renewable energy and even fossil fuels to make some more software.

The Economy of Promises was a brilliant term coined by Professor Richard Jones in relation to nanotech in 2008 for Nature Nano here:

https://lnkd.in/eN8ERCCm

I used it to highlight the consequences of hype in my World Economic Forum article on 5 lessons from the past for the future of tech in 2017:

2. Hype has consequences

The way funding works is that in order to get the money, scientists and businesses have to massively exaggerate the potential benefit of their ‘ology' - ‘an end to hunger’ (GMO's) ‘electricity too cheap to meter’, (Nuclear) ‘the end of disease’ (nano) - the media love it, funders get excited and the money flows.

"But this “economy of promises” is just another form of fake news, with potentially damaging repercussions:

"The short-term reality can’t possibly live up to the hype and the trustworthiness of the technology is tarnished. For example, the failure of the US National Cancer Institute’s 2004 aspiration to eliminate death and suffering from cancer with nanotechnology by 2015 might have left many a little disappointed.

...... Are we wasting time debating the ethics of science fiction when we could be discussing the not inconsiderable impact of the reality."

YES. Is my view. This is how we end up ignoring the negatives of products and end up with The Addiction Economy.

Altman's hype is a form of Disinformation we swallow at our peril.

https://lnkd.in/d7MKU5p