22 The New Ecology
Ignoring the many assumptions that take place within Tegmark’s scenario (for example, that the Omega Team is not Chinese and thus does
not automatically comprise those favourable to a liberal-capitalist democracy), it is worth concentrating on this passage with regard to the
extensive fantasy it provides surrounding artificial intelligence and journalism. The utopian vision of humanity’s future that Tegmark provides
in Life 3.0 has an important role to play in terms of recognising a special
role for the media: to gain traction, Prometheus needs to operate a media
company, not merely producing high-quality rendered entertainment at
a lower cost than human competitors, but also as a news source. Of interest in this scenario are two particular points which will be explored in
much more detail in subsequent chapters: first of all, the news company
operates as a public service and, in contrast to the rest of its entertainment remit, operates at a loss; secondly, Prometheus is much better at
finding stories because of its “real-time monitoring of the internet”. The
third notion that Prometheus can afford to pay more competitive salaries
for news without bringing in any income is, I believe, where Tegmark
enters the world of pure fantasy.
Regarding funding more generally for a news channel, Tegmark –
who is Swedish-American – appears to hanker after the public–private
duopoly that is common in many European countries rather than the
more cutthroat commercial environment of North America. As we shall
see in the next chapter, the advertising-led model that has driven media
growth in the past century or more seems very much broken the tech
giants of the twenty-first century, and Tegmark’s idealistic solution is
to build an altruistic public service function into Prometheus and the
motivations of the Omega Team.
48
Software-generated journalism will
be returned to in Chapter 4: because Tegmark is dealing with the notion of a singularity, a climactic moment when AI moves beyond human
comprehension, the ability of Prometheus to find stories that no person
can match as outlined previously is better treated as fiction. As we shall
see, no algorithm yet is capable of generating anything close to human
writers, and the question remains as to whether – without a mythical
singularity – such an activity is actually programmable. Despite my criticisms, however, which are many, I do appreciate that Tegmark considers
journalism a significant activity for AI and also that, as a Professor of
Physics, he has a more idealistic view of the profession than many of
those working in the media.
Tegmark’s reference to “life 3.0” is meant to distinguish that in which
hardware, through technological mastery, is able to reconfigure itself,
from life 1.0 (development through evolution) and life 2.0 (development
through software or programming – that is, teaching and learning).
While I am gently mocking the scenario that leads to Prometheus (if
not Tegmark’s idealism regarding the media), his book is an interesting definition of some of the myths and concerns surrounding artificial
Ignoring the many assumptions that take place within Tegmark’s scenario (for example, that the Omega Team is not Chinese and thus does
not automatically comprise those favourable to a liberal-capitalist democracy), it is worth concentrating on this passage with regard to the
extensive fantasy it provides surrounding artificial intelligence and journalism. The utopian vision of humanity’s future that Tegmark provides
in Life 3.0 has an important role to play in terms of recognising a special
role for the media: to gain traction, Prometheus needs to operate a media
company, not merely producing high-quality rendered entertainment at
a lower cost than human competitors, but also as a news source. Of interest in this scenario are two particular points which will be explored in
much more detail in subsequent chapters: first of all, the news company
operates as a public service and, in contrast to the rest of its entertainment remit, operates at a loss; secondly, Prometheus is much better at
finding stories because of its “real-time monitoring of the internet”. The
third notion that Prometheus can afford to pay more competitive salaries
for news without bringing in any income is, I believe, where Tegmark
enters the world of pure fantasy.
Regarding funding more generally for a news channel, Tegmark –
who is Swedish-American – appears to hanker after the public–private
duopoly that is common in many European countries rather than the
more cutthroat commercial environment of North America. As we shall
see in the next chapter, the advertising-led model that has driven media
growth in the past century or more seems very much broken the tech
giants of the twenty-first century, and Tegmark’s idealistic solution is
to build an altruistic public service function into Prometheus and the
motivations of the Omega Team.
48
Software-generated journalism will
be returned to in Chapter 4: because Tegmark is dealing with the notion of a singularity, a climactic moment when AI moves beyond human
comprehension, the ability of Prometheus to find stories that no person
can match as outlined previously is better treated as fiction. As we shall
see, no algorithm yet is capable of generating anything close to human
writers, and the question remains as to whether – without a mythical
singularity – such an activity is actually programmable. Despite my criticisms, however, which are many, I do appreciate that Tegmark considers
journalism a significant activity for AI and also that, as a Professor of
Physics, he has a more idealistic view of the profession than many of
those working in the media.
Tegmark’s reference to “life 3.0” is meant to distinguish that in which
hardware, through technological mastery, is able to reconfigure itself,
from life 1.0 (development through evolution) and life 2.0 (development
through software or programming – that is, teaching and learning).
While I am gently mocking the scenario that leads to Prometheus (if
not Tegmark’s idealism regarding the media), his book is an interesting definition of some of the myths and concerns surrounding artificial