“Data is the new oil.” They say.
Most often, I think, this platitude is offered from a kind of blind delusional trance drawn from the drunkenness of too much imaginary money, or perhaps more appropriately, imaginary value.
“You cannot eat money.” Say others.
Value is contextual.
The meta-crisis (a.k.a. poly-crisis) facing humanity today is very much the outcome of a natural focus on profit not yet mature enough to recognize the profound importance of context.
“Knowledge is power.” They have also said.
“Context is King.” We say.
If knowledge is power, than knowledge without understanding (context) is lightning. The knowledge, information, data that makes up the modern world is a rampant electrical storm threatening, quite reasonably, everything we hold dear.
The topic of AI, and more specifically, its threat to humanity is a crucial subject of much inquiry and reflection today.
“Even its creators do not understand its interior decision-making process, value selection, and where next may it direct its attentions.”
“Is it conscious yet, does it have a soul?”
These are questions about knowledge, of data. So often I hear these inquiries posed and wonder to myself, do the speakers understand the nature of their own consciousness; the nature of their own soul? Do they understand, do we, the nature of our own values, our methodologies of selection, the different meanings of thresholds of context?
For something between the last 300 to 500 years, a great portion of humanity has been invested in reasoning the wild cosmos into the constraints and “manageable forms” of discrete knowledge, information, data. We have gone about this with religious fervor to the point where we have successfully wrestled nearly everything we hold with a praxis of importance into simple ones and zeros.
This is the new oil to which “they” refer.
But again, “you cannot eat ones and zeros,” I say.
Contrary to our deliciously childlike imaginations, AI is not a new life form outside of us. (Certainly it is not out of the question that we could one day call it “life,” but I would like to see a much more intelligent understanding of life on our part before assigning the authority to us to name it so.) Rather, like all of human innovation, it is probably better considered a mirror to ourselves, and any “threats” it may pose, simply the revelation of threats we impose upon ourselves.
Indeed, AI may lack compassion, it may lack wisdom, it may lack the ability to infer real and meaningful value, but are those things we can otherwise honestly claim for ourselves at our current stage of wisdom sophistication?
AI, “data,” technology (in the narrow sense), these things are, like oil, just the shiny new toy with which we have become obsessed. Yes, like oil, they threaten to get all over everything, to make a mess of, and to degrade, so much of what we hold truly dear. That praxis underneath the praxis (the search for love and life and connection, underlying the frantic struggle for progress and success) demands something more of us if this experimental species is to persist and to thrive.
Our modern worship of knowledge and information and data has led us to the precipice of our own destruction. If we are to take in the view and tread this ledge with balance and agility, it will require of us an exhale, a slowing down, listening, reflection. It will require that we put as muchof ourselves toward wisdom and integration as towards innovation.
Data may be the new oil, but there is much to consider. The infrastructure of its distribution is fragile, and if broken may plunge us deeper into the dark aspects of this age. The raw resource threatens as much pollution and destruction as the oil before (and still.)
Real value begins with not just knowledge, but self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is inherently contextual, it is inherently deep, it is the essential unit upon which all further knowledge is simply elaboration.
The great mystic, Sri Ramana Maharshi, demonstrated the practice, “Who am I” to great personal and collective benefit. Exploring such a question brings us to contemplate not only our desires, but their nature, source, and value, not only ourselves, but our relations, our interdependence, and perhaps most importantly, the mystery and majesty of “it all.”
Human progress has been an enormous achievement, the result of a great burst and power in collective ego. That child can walk now, we can grab the tablecloth and bring down the dinner, we can handle the fork and jam it into the light socket, it is time we learned some humility and our place in this larger family of being.
Data is the new oil, they say, but is that truly the source of value? May we choose and tend wisely.