This is the second part (paid) of a five-part essay on the psychology of AI nerds. They are intended to be read in order (introduction included in part 1). The third part—III. Apoliticality—comes out tomorrow. Here are the previous parts:
II. Escapism
There’s still a chance that AI nerds won’t manage to rule the world or, conversely, drown it in abundance-disguised slop. If they can’t tame it, then they will flee with it.
But before you accuse them of cowardice, though, remember that they aren’t without good reasons. There are millionaire AI engineers and developers working in some of the most wealthy and powerful tech companies in the world who lack something you could get from a homeless person in Baltimore’s poorest suburb or in a sun-bleached trailer park outside Yuma: a sense of belonging to the world they live in.
This defines AI nerds’ relationship with AI more even than their yearning for abundance. Whereas tech executives, politicians, and investors, pupils green like dollar signs, see it as the goose that lays the golden eggs and the general public sees it, in sheer panic, as Pandora’s box—a threat to jobs, to the planet, to art, to the infosystem, to trust and effort and literacy and life itself—AI nerds see it as a secret third thing.
They don’t so much want to be rich and powerful or destroy civilization—even if those are the two scenarios everyone talks about—as they want to escape their current existence. To some degree, this applies to everyone. The difference is that the AI nerd has gathered enough power to act on it.
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