The simple case for AI maximalism (and what that means)

AI isn't going anywhere or slowing down, so why bother identifying as a "maximalist"?

I’m an AI maximalist, which in an age where AI’s popularity is dropping off a cliff, makes me a bit of a contrarian. At least in the broader cultural conversation.

So here’s what I mean by “AI maximalism” and why I think it’s a reasonable position. Rather than try to give a rigorous pseudo-academic definition, I’ll use analogy.

I’m an AI maximalist in the same way I’m an electricity maximalist. It doesn’t mean I want to put AI into every little thing just because. I once joked that we’d soon have sentient toasters. I think there’s an appropriate amount of AI for everything, and there’s also taking it too far.

But think about electricity for a moment.

We keep finding new uses for it. Electricity has become the medium and the substrate for much of human endeavor. Everything from 5G to AI is downstream of electricity.

In the same way that electricity saturates our world today, I think AI will saturate our future. It’s very obviously the “next big thing.”

But why? Why bother saying “I’m a maximalist” at all? After all, I believe in macro trends, incentive structures, and there’s no stopping this train. My personal policy is “don’t waste any energy on inevitable things” but instead I align with the currents.

In that respect, being an AI maximalist is aligning with the way of things. Taking the path of least resistance.

I know some people might say that’s just lazy, you gotta stand up for something. But since when did “standing up for something” entail picking lost causes, when I want the outcome anyways.

Here’s the outcome I mean: medical science advancing by leaps and bounds; fully integrated entertainment such as my own movies, games, and TV shows; a heavily automated industrial substrate that provides for humanity.

The closest we’re getting to the Star Trek future is by way of AI.

Now, the next complaint will be something along the lines of “oh so does that mean you’re all for Elon Musk owning the future and the military industrial complex automating warfare?!”

This is, once again, where I simply take reality as it’s coming. There’s something called the Nirvana Fallacy, whereby people might argue that just because something isn’t perfect, it is therefore bad or unacceptable.

As a science fiction aficionado, I’ve known that autonomous warfare has been coming for decades. It was another one of those inevitable things. Likewise for trillionaires. Do I like it? No. Do I endorse it? Also no.

But I also recognize that it’s part of the world we live in, and nothing is ever going to be perfect, and that all technology is dual use.

What really needs to happen, and what has happened many times throughout history, is that we need to integrate the new technology into society. Like coal and steel, like electricity and radio, and like the internet before it, AI will have its pros and cons. That’s just a fact of life.

As some like to say in the South, fighting that is like pissing into the wind. I will pick my battles, namely about Post-Labor Economics, but that’s integration work, not unserious “shut it all down or everyone dies” nonsense.

At this point, I’ve encountered huffy pushback in the past “how can you be so cavalier about people losing their jobs!?”

Tone policing aside, first it’s not my fault that people will lose their jobs. Secondarily, this has happened many times in the past. And it sucks. I’m not going to say anything delusional like “you just gotta upskill” because that’s idiotic and cruel. Not everyone has the capacity to pivot.

And again, the abolishment of human labor is explicitly my goal. And I should be more specific: I want to eradicate wage slavery. I want to end precarity for all and move us from a wage-centric economy to a capital-based economy.

As time goes by, my probability estimates for all the negative outcomes that people fear is dropping. X-risk is fading from sight. Cyberpunk dystopia is still a possibility, but I’m less and less convinced that it’s the default outcome.

The reason is because of a massive plurality of stakeholders and many vested interests that are going to pull in the same direction as automation advances. Let me put it to you this way: as aggregate demand drops, every corporation is going to argue “our customers need money, I don’t care how they get it.”

Likewise, every bank and lender is going to say “our borrowers need ways to pay back their debt, we don’t care how they get it.”

And again, no politician is going to get elected on the platform “we’re going to automated away everything and leave you up the creek without a paddle.”

We are moving in the right direction. There’s less and less that I feel like anyone needs to do to intervene. The super intelligence of the human hivemind is working it out.

The river will meet the sea regardless of what any one person does.