Which two AI startups were acquired for $400M?
The author must be working from a very funny definition of the word "civilization." Most of the world's civilizations espoused few or no liberal ideas, and predate the scientific revolution.
Besides, his core thesis is obviously flawed. If progress is everything, how is it that the "golden ages" of everything from physics, to art, to pharmaceutical drug development, are so clearly behind us? If we must take a narrow view, there are a number of states that are materially poorer than they were 30 years ago. And why do we need a new, codified philosophy of technology when our grandfathers were able to build the world without it? Seems to me that the extremely online author has a solution in search of a problem.
Or alternatively, keep technologists well away from policy making.
Once the web/mobile/advertising boom finally finishes up (and we are nearly there) and all these things are commodified, then nobody will care about 'the modern technological age' because there will be no money.
Technologists diving into philosophy will just come up with a more elaborate, more pretentious defenses of everything they do.
By the way, why not the other way?
"Only if philosophers learn to code and debug, and join the fray, can we ensure human flourishing in the modern technological age."
Can't wait to see what those minds come up with.
Also, when trying to look up this "Cosmos Institute", I didn't find anything that would seem related to this article. Weird.
> Gebru has used the acronym TESCREAL to criticize what she sees as a group of overlapping futurist philosophies: Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism. She considers this to be a right-leaning influence in Big Tech and compares proponents to "the eugenicists of the 20th century" in their production of harmful projects they portray as "benefiting humanity".
