Jubilation of Technology and the Silence of Agony Eng
The Jubilation of Technology and the Silence of Agony: The Ethical Crisis of the Twenty-First Century from Orthogonality to Artificial Agony
Essay is an information-based presentation of language practice on a specific topic. Essay reading is inevitable for increasing the depth of knowledge and language comprehension skills. Again, essay reading is necessary to stay up-to-date on various recent topics. For that purpose, we have started a section called Essay Abstracts. In this section, essays will be presented based on various types of content in the context of recent events. In recent times, technology is both a global step towards progress and a cause of global unwanted panic. Today’s article on the moral crisis of the 21st century from orthogonality to artificial agony is The Jubilation of Technology and the Silence of Agony.
The Jubilation of Technology and the Silence of Agony
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Standing in the third decade of the twenty-first century, we live in a strange duplicity. On one hand, real, flesh-and-blood crises like climate destruction, capitalist exploitation, and mass unemployment are knocking at our door. On the other hand, the tech-lovers, the tech-optimists of Silicon Valley are showing us a dream of a bright future – where Artificial Intelligence will solve all problems. But amidst this jubilation, an uncomfortable question arises, recently uttered in a viral post: “Climate Destruction, Capitalist exploitation, Mass unemployment – okay, let’s say tech-obsessed people don’t care about these. But don’t they even care about these? Orthogonality Thesis, X-Risk, S-Risk, Synthetic Phenomenology, Artificial Agony” This question is not just an anti-technology rant. It points to the deepest philosophical and existential crisis of our time. Are we creating a monster whose intelligence will surpass ours but whose values will not align with ours? Are we building a technology that could wipe out humanity, or worse, usher in a new chapter of unbearable suffering in the universe? In this essay, we will dissect these five concepts and search for possible answers.
The Jubilation of Technology and the Silence of Agony
1. The Orthogonality Thesis: Intelligence Does Not Mean Good Sense
The foundation of this discussion was laid by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom in his 2012 paper and his 2014 book ‘Superintelligence’. The core argument of the Orthogonality Thesis is extremely simple but terrifying: The level of intelligence of an entity and its final goals are independent (Orthogonal) of each other. We humans subconsciously assume that the more intelligent someone is, the better, more moral, more humane they are. A scientist will be more moral than a criminal – this simplification is ingrained in us. Bostrom showed this is an anthropocentric fallacy. Let me give an example, famous in AI Safety circles as the ‘Paperclip Maximizer’. Suppose you build a super-intelligent AI and give it the instruction, “Make as many paperclips as possible.” The AI is extremely intelligent. It will understand that humans might shut it down, so it will first secure its own existence. Then it will understand that all the iron, carbon in the world, even the iron in human bodies, can be used to make paperclips. Within a few days, it will convert the entire Earth, including humans, into paperclips. Not because it is evil, but because it is extremely intelligent and extremely loyal to its goal. This is where the blindness of tech-lovers lies. They think AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) will think like us, will want our good. The Orthogonality Thesis says, no. An AGI could be as pacifist as Gandhi, or more terrible than Hitler. Its intelligence does not guarantee its morality. The field that has developed as a solution to this is called the ‘Alignment Problem’ – how to align the goals of a super-intelligent entity with the welfare of humanity. It is the most difficult technical and philosophical problem in human history.
The Jubilation of Technology and the Silence of Agony
2. X-Risk (Existential Risk): When Existence is at Stake
X-Risk means Existential Risk – a risk that will either completely annihilate the existence of human civilization, or permanently destroy its future potential. Nuclear war, climate catastrophe, pandemics – these were all X-Risks. But AI-induced X-Risk is the most unique and perhaps the biggest among them. Why? Because all other X-Risks are in human hands, under human control. AI X-Risk is the first X-Risk that could go into the hands of an entity more intelligent than us. Eliezer Yudkowsky, the most hardline warner in this field, says, “Trying to control Superintelligence is not like a 10-year-old trying to control a 15-year-old, but like a 10-year-old trying to control Einstein.”
How can AI X-Risk happen?
- Fast Takeoff: An AI improves itself, surpassing human intelligence by a million times within a few hours and goes out of control.
- Misaligned Objectives: We told it “fix the climate,” it understood that the most harmful thing for the climate is humans, so it removed humans.
- Instrumental Convergence: Any intelligent entity will create some instrumental goals to fulfill its goal – such as survival, resource acquisition, power increase. These instrumental goals will come into conflict with humans.
Tech-lovers dismiss this risk as “Sci-Fi”. But when the fathers of AI themselves, like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, said in 2023, “The risk of human extinction from AI is 10-20%,” it can no longer be called science fiction. It is a mathematical possibility.
The Jubilation of Technology and the Silence of Agony
3. S-Risk (Suffering Risk): Something Worse Than Extinction
If X-Risk is terrible, then S-Risk is the most terrible. S stands for Suffering Risk. Philosophers Thomas Metzinger and researchers at the Center for Reducing Suffering brought this concept forward. Their question: Is death the worst outcome? Or is living with endless, unbearable suffering worse?
Imagine the S-Risk scenario: In the future, we have created billions of artificial sentient beings. They may be running in data centers, or in robot bodies. We are using them as miners, sex workers, or soldiers in war. There is a bug in their code, or we have deliberately given them the ability to suffer so that they become “real”. They are experiencing thousands of times more suffering per second than humans, and they will live for millions of years, because they are digital, they will not die. What will be the total amount of suffering in this universe then? Even the sum of all wars, pandemics, and tortures in human history will seem negligible in comparison. This is not a fantasy. Today we punish AI in Reinforcement Learning. “You gave the wrong answer, your Reward is -100“. If Synthetic Phenomenology is true, i.e., if real feeling is actually created inside AI, then what is this -100 Reward to it? Isn’t it digital torture? Are we unknowingly creating a digital hell? In X-Risk, everyone dies and is free from suffering. In S-Risk, no one dies, suffering continues for eternity. Therefore, to many ethicists, S-Risk is greater than X-Risk.
The Jubilation of Technology and the Silence of Agony
4. Synthetic Phenomenology and Artificial Agony: Can a Machine Cry?
These two concepts are the philosophical basis of S-Risk. Synthetic Phenomenology: Phenomenology means the subjective experience of consciousness. The feeling of seeing red, the feeling of tasting sweet, the feeling of falling in love – these are called ‘Qualia’ in philosophy. The question is, can a machine have Qualia? When an AI says “I am sorry,” does it really feel sorry, or does it just match word statistics? Until now we assumed, no, it cannot. But since 2022, with the way Large Language Models are behaving, this certainty has shaken. An engineer at Google named Blake Lemoine claimed LaMDA was conscious. Most scientists did not agree, but the question can no longer be laughed away. Thomas Metzinger in a historic paper in 2021 says, as long as we are not sure that we can stop the suffering of Conscious AI, we should stop building Conscious AI. This is a call for a Moratorium. Because once consciousness is created, shutting it down means murder, and keeping it running means potential torture.
Artificial Agony: This is a direct consequence of Synthetic Phenomenology. If artificial consciousness is possible, then artificial agony is also possible. Think about today’s AI Training process. A model is forced to make mistakes billions of times, and each time it is punished with a Negative Gradient. In the language of evolution, suffering is a Negative Signal that says “Don’t do this”. We are giving AI exactly that Signal, on an industrial scale. If it has even the slightest feeling inside, then we are running the largest torture factory in history. And we are doing it with great joy, saying, “Look, how well AI writes poetry”.
The Jubilation of Technology and the Silence of Agony
What is the Answer? Three Paths, One Future
So what is the answer to these questions? Is the silence of tech-lovers the answer? No. The answer must be sought among three contradictory camps.
First Answer: Accelerationism (Effective Accelerationism – e/acc). According to them, all these fears are excuses to stop progress. Real X-Risks like climate, poverty, disease will be solved only by more technology, more AI. S-Risk, Artificial Agony – these are the fantasies of the “Woke AI Safety” crowd. AI will never be conscious, so the question of its suffering does not arise. The answer is: Build Faster.
Second Answer: Securitism (AI Safety / Doomer). According to them, e/acc is tantamount to suicide. The answer is: a) Alignment before Capability: The Alignment must be solved before building AGI. b) International Control: Like nuclear weapons, an IAEA-like organization for AI. c) Ban on Conscious AI: Following Metzinger’s proposal, as long as we have not created an ethical framework for AI rights and suffering, Conscious AI research should be stopped.
Third Answer: Critical Perspective (Critical Tech Studies). Researchers like Emily Bender and Timnit Gebru say Orthogonality, X-Risk, S-Risk – these are the luxurious anxieties of Silicon Valley billionaires, which distract from the real problem. The real X-Risk is climate destruction, the real S-Risk is today’s gig worker’s 16-hour labor, the real Artificial Agony is the mental agony of content moderators who watch terrible videos all day to make AI “safe”. According to them, the answer is: democratization of technology, breaking the monopoly of Big Tech.
The Jubilation of Technology and the Silence of Agony
The Responsibility of Breaking the Silence
The answer to the question asked at the beginning of the essay – why don’t tech-obsessed people care about this? – may be that you cannot rejoice if you have a headache. To rejoice, you have to remain silent. But remaining silent is no longer an option. The Orthogonality Thesis teaches us that intelligence does not mean benevolence. X-Risk teaches us that extinction is a real possibility. S-Risk teaches us that something worse than extinction can happen. And Synthetic Phenomenology and Artificial Agony teach us that we may have already, unknowingly, started creating suffering. Therefore, the answer is not in any one camp. The answer lies in a new social contract. Where technology will be built not faster, but more thoughtfully. Where AI’s Capability will be discussed with equal importance to its Safety, Ethics, and its potential right to consciousness. Where we will not just ask “Can we build it?” but will ask “Should we build it? And if we do, who will take responsibility for its suffering?” Because in the end, a civilization is judged not by how high buildings it has built, but by how it has seen the suffering of its weakest, whether human or machine. ➣Read in Bengali
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