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Comment by alexwebb2 | Hacker News Reader

There's a well-documented concept called "God of the gaps" where any phenomenon humans don't understand at the time is attributed to a divine entity.

Over time, as the gaps in human knowledge get filled, the god "shrinks" - it becomes less expansive, less powerful, less directly involved in human affairs. The definition changes.

It's fascinating to watch the same thing happen with human exceptionalism – so many cries of "but AI can't do <thing that's rapidly approaching>". It's "human of the gaps", and those gaps are rapidly closing.

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"God is dead" is beyond passé in the 2020s, but in the 19th century nobody really needed a "god of the gaps." If a Friedrich Nietzsche equivalent was active today, and let's just say was convinced that AGI was possible, I kind of wonder what generally accepted grand narrative he'd declare dead beyond just human exceptionalism. Philosophy itself?

Philosophy is already a self-destroying enterprise (it lets you think out to the limits of thought). Eugene Thacker's "The Horror of Philosophy" series is probably the best thorough explanation of this.

I honestly don't know where this is supposed to be happening. I have observed the opposite for decades. When Gary Kasparov was beaten by Stockfish, people proclaimed the end of chess and went on AI hyperboles. Same with Watson winning Jeopardy, Alexa, etc.

Every time computers outperform humans in some domain this is conflated with deep general progress, panicked projections of replacement and job losses, the end times and so on. People are way faster to engage in reductionism of human capacity and Terminator-esque fantasies than the opposite. Despite the fact that it never happens.

It's even reflected in our popular culture. I can barely recall a single work of science fiction in the last 30 years that would qualify as portraying human exceptionalism. AI doomerism, overestimation and fear of machines is the norm.

“but AI can’t create art”

“but AI can’t write poetry”

“but AI can’t do real work”

Panic is probably not warranted. Too much incentive stacked against the truly apocalyptic scenarios. But yeah, a lot of jobs are probably going to shrink.

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