A future I love: Collaboration AI and Collective Agency. This vision is totally under construction right now, so the way I share it here is going to be choppy and incomplete, because that's what I've got.
Near future: Tipping Point for sensible discourse
- I dream of a near future where red and blue don't only throw things at one another and call each other names, where AI safety and e/acc can talk about where they agree and not just where they disagree. In the first unfolding of this, I think a realization hits individuals: we don't have to fight anymore.
- 2005: um, why fight about that (fact)? you could just google it? or look on wikipedia?
- 2026: um, why fight about that (intersubjective difference)? it sucks much less if you get some AI help talking sensibly together (or talk in places where talk is sensible, like UpTrust)
And then: Weaving humanity together with more collective agency
- Individuals are over-biased today; the world is made up of collectives, the dozens or hundreds of small and large groups each of us are part of, just as it's made of individuals
- Subjectivity and bridging: Twitter/X often falls into one of two failure modes: 1) a single frame to evaluate worthiness, or 2) nihilistic pluralism, agree to disagree. To enable sensemaking we need to encourage people's subjective powers they're already using every day, while also helping build bridges between different subjectives and world views
- Groups wake up and see each other: Often people think the point of coherence/agency in a particular group is to benefit the particular members of that group. Actually once a group wakes up to its own agency, it can see itself and the world, and see other groups. Often today when this happens the groups awaken pretty unconsciously into fighting; with more awareness and collective structures, we can make this visible, and help groups have the self-awareness to grow up.
And then: Humans and AIs creating the world together
- "How to Save your Marriage without Talking About It": don't try so hard to solve all your "problems" by going at them. Find things you enjoy doing together. Do those things. The more you do that, you'll find your relationship re-orienting, as that you do things you enjoy together. With AI, the more we instantiate the world as made of AIs and humans collaborating, creating together, working together to make the future, the more that becomes a bigger orienting principle in the world.
#FutureYouLove