Dear Trader,
Does the monster under your bed still scare you? Me neither. But you know who it scares? My youngest, along with plenty of other little kids.
I'd bet at some point in your life you feared the dark, monsters under the bed, the water in the pool, or some other silly thing.
I sure did.
And I'll bet you laugh about it now.
Still, we never really stop worrying about things we should let go. Over and over, I've watched people burn time on worries that don't deserve it. It could center on your career, your relationships, or your puppy eating the sandwich you left a little too close to the edge of the counter (okay, that one might hold up, and it may have happened to me).
I know some of you worry about AI right now. Will it take your job? Will it destroy the world?
The first worry holds some weight. But I believe AI will create more jobs, not fewer, just different ones (remember, nobody worked as a web developer in 1980).
As for the end of humanity, count me as more than skeptical. Do I think AI needs some safeguards? Of course I do.
Frankly, humanity ending humanity concerns me more than AI does, and I don't give that one a second thought either.
Does any of this remind you of something? I didn't live through it, but it reminds me of the Cold War fear that ran from the Red Scare of the 1950s into the early 1960s.
Yes, we had the Cuban Missile Crisis. But the two countries worked their way through it, and nothing since has brought us that close. At humanity's most dangerous point, we found a way out.
That said, we spent a little too much time scaring the American public. Mostly, all that fear handed the government a lot of control over what we heard, what we knew, and what it could listen in on.
No, I don't buy into conspiracy theories. But let's call a spade a spade: the government did some manipulating for its own purposes during the Red Scare.
Some of that might happen again right now. Ask yourself this question: Why does all this news about the dangers of AI keep hitting right now?
Does it work to any person's or company's advantage?
Who wants more regulation?
Who does regulation likely build a moat for (a barrier that keeps smaller competitors out), and who gets left on the other side of it?
Your only option,
Mark Sebastian