00:00There are two forms of knowing. You can know something and do something about it or you can
00:04know something and look away afraid of the consequences of what might be true. This was
00:08a quote by Roger Bregman in one of my all-time favorite books, The Moral Ambition. I was
00:13reminded again of this quote when I read this essay called The Psychology of Collective
00:18Abandonment in Psychology Today by Cornelia C. Walter. In this essay, the author makes
00:23the argument that we as a collective are paralyzed when it comes to making decisions such as
00:27reducing starvation across the world, while tech giants are investing billions of dollars
00:32into data senders that drains the place of its water and resources. So why are we making
00:38these decisions? He suggests how it's mainly because of fundamental biases in human decision
00:43making. And I personally think our brain has not been able to keep up with the rapid advancements
00:49that we have had in a very short period of time. Among these biases involve the proximity
00:54bias where we have a tendency to prioritize the short-term comfort over long-term sustainability.
01:00Why would I care whether the next generation has water when I can just know where my Amazon
01:05package is through an AI chatbot? There are also many other parameters involved such as thinking
01:09just because technology is developing means that we are advancing humanity even though we are
01:14depleting the basic resources from one part of the humanity that is from bottom to top.
01:19And I know what you might be thinking. You might be thinking that I work so hard and I'm so
01:22tired
01:23and I just want some comfort and I shouldn't be made to feel guilty about it. And I completely
01:27understand and I empathize with you. But at the same time, we cannot let AI and its masters hijack
01:33our mind, our thoughts and our resources. We cannot simply be bystanders when our humanity is being
01:38swept away from us. AI is here and it's not going anywhere. Whether we want to or not, we might
01:43have
01:43to end up using it. So what can we do about it? As the author of the article suggests, we
01:48can reframe
01:49how we think about it. Instead of asking, what can AI do? We can ask, how can we use AI
01:53to enhance our human dignity and our planetary wealth and health? Morality and ethics should
01:58always be at the forefront. We have to keep asking ourselves, what are the bearing costs
02:03and how can we balance them out? We have to keep reminding ourselves about the abstract cost
02:08in concrete terms. We have to remind that every conversation that you have with an LLM or AI,
02:13it takes about one water bottle, every single conversation. So we have to keep remembering
02:19the concrete costs that we are doing onto the world. And we have to remember most importantly
02:24that it's not AI's future. It's our future and we are determining the role of AI in it.
02:31We have to develop moral ambition.
