Why Build AI? Maybe Because It's Fun for the Builders
The underrated allure of exercising one's talent to do cool things
“To make the world a better place” has never made sense to me as motivation to go to work. Not because I don’t want the world to be better; not because I won’t help when help is needed. But looking at a distance at all 4,680 weeks of a long human life, it seems obvious that I can’t know much about my impact on other people, society or the world.
Take Elon Musk’s ambition to get to Mars will save humanity. But maybe the Mars chase will do so much damage to society and science that his net impact will be negative. Who can say? No one, that’s who. “We know not; and no search will make us know. Only the event will teach us in its hour,” as the poem says. Help the neighbors out today? Sure. But “do my work today because it makes the world a better place” ? People ought not to be so sure of themselves.
I was surprised to learn the other day that the great psychologist Daniel Kahneman had come to a similar conclusion. In this New York Times article (famous or infamous no…