I’m starting to think wanting to change the world is arrogance. I mean change the world in the capital “W” sense of the word. It looks nice on the surface, but man, the hubris. I would have once counted myself among the group trying, but after reading Jim Prosser’s AI, "Humanity", and Dr. Manhattan Syndrome (Via Daring Fireball), I’ve come to believe it requires a real god complex to actually believe you can do it.
Prosser compares AI frontier lab tech leaders to Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen.
For those who haven’t read writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons’ “Watchmen”, here’s the quick version: Jon Osterman is a nuclear physicist who gets disintegrated in a lab accident and reconstitutes himself as a being of godlike power. He can see across time. He can manipulate matter at the atomic level. He is, for all practical purposes, omniscient and omnipotent. And over the arc of the story, he gradually loses the ability to give a shit about people.
Prosser does a lot to excuse the behavior, trying to take the sting off his message. “It’s not their fault, they just see the world differently,” he would say. Well, not exactly. But it’s close.
This isn’t a flaw in his character. Moore wrote it as the inevitable consequence of operating at that altitude. Manhattan can perceive the entire arc of human civilization. He understands the quantum mechanics underlying all of existence. He genuinely does care about humanity’s survival in some detached cosmic sense. But he can’t maintain a relationship with the woman he loves or comfort someone who’s grieving. Individual suffering becomes statistically insignificant when you’re tracking the movements of atoms and the trajectory of species.
With Dr. Manhattan, I get it. He has god like powers. Tech leaders don’t. I’ll grant that they believe they do, but what would you call someone who believes they’re a god? I think I’m being generous to call it arrogance.