Douthat: But just to be clear, by the standards of the predictions people are making, that prediction is of a relatively slow pace of change.
Vance: Well, I think it’s a relatively slow pace of change. But I just think, on the economic side, the main concern that I have with A.I. is not of the obsolescence, it’s not people losing jobs en masse.
You hear about truck drivers, for example. I think what might actually happen is that truck drivers are able to work more efficient hours. They’re able to get a little bit more sleep. They’re doing much more on the last mile of delivery than staring at a highway for 13 hours a day. So they’re both safer and they’re able to get higher wages.
So anyway, I’m more optimistic — I should say about the economic side of this, recognizing that yes, there are concerns. I don’t mean to understate them.
Where I really worry about this is in pretty much everything noneconomic? I think the way that people engage with one another. The trend that I’m most worried about, there are a lot of them, and I actually, I don’t want to give too many details, but I talked to the Holy Father about this today.
If you look at basic dating behavior among young people — and I think a lot of this is that the dating apps are probably more destructive than we fully appreciate. I think part of it is technology has just for some reason made it harder for young men and young women to communicate with each other in the same way. Our young men and women just aren’t dating, and if they’re not dating, they’re not getting married, they’re not starting families.
There’s a level of isolation, I think, mediated through technology, that technology can be a bit of a salve. It can be a bit of a Band-Aid. Maybe it makes you feel less lonely, even when you are lonely. But this is where I think A.I. could be profoundly dark and negative. I don’t think it’ll mean three million truck drivers are out of a job. I certainly hope it doesn’t mean that. But what I do really worry about is does it mean that there are millions of American teenagers talking to chatbots who don’t have their best interests at heart? Or even if they do have their best interests at heart, they start to develop a relationship, they start to expect a chatbot that’s trying to give a dopamine rush, and, you know, compared to a chatbot, a normal human interaction is not going to be as satisfying, because human beings have wants and needs.
And I think that’s, of course, one of the great things about marriage in particular, is you have this other person, and you just have to kind of figure it out together. Right? But if the other person is a chatbot who’s just trying to hook you to spend as much time on it, that’s the sort of stuff that I really worry about with A.I.
And then there’s also a whole host of defense and technology applications. We could wake up very soon in a world where there is no cybersecurity. Where the idea of your bank account being safe and secure is just a relic of the past. Where there’s weird shit happening in space mediated through A.I. that makes our communications infrastructure either actively hostile or at least largely inept and inert. So, yeah, I’m worried about this stuff.
