Techno-Optimism is Hollow

The popular and dangerous movement driving our AI policy

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

In 2023, renowned investor, software engineer, and billionaire Marc Andreessen wrote the “Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” outlining in bullet-point format the general beliefs and values of Techno-Optimism and why it was an essential movement for our moment in history. The essence of this manifesto is that we need to reject the “lies” being told about the dangers of technology in stories like Frankenstein and Terminator and in the media. Instead, we need to embrace abundance, technological adventure, energy, growth, and acceleration. For Andreessen, this is not just about advancing technology, this is about the future of humanity, human flourishing, and solving our all our material problems—literally. Through figures like Elon Musk, this spirit of Techno-Optimism seems to have gained significant political capital right now. Even as AI appears to be on the cusp of developing into something new (more on that later), our government has embraced the acceleration of that development. Speaking to European leaders, Vice President Vance declared that “The A.I. future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety.” Instead, (arguably) our government and (certainly) large corporations are rushing past issues of ethics, safety, and legality in search of what is possible. Consider Meta’s use of LibGen to train their AI. LibGen is a site that illegally hosts pirated copies of millions of books and research papers, including all three of my books. In order to accelerate the process of making their AI, they fed their AI data they (in my humble opinion) illegally accessed. Despite the hand-waving of Andreessen that the lessons of Frankenstein are “lies,” it seems undeniable to me that Techno-Optimism, as presented in the manifesto and in practice, lacks a moral telos aside from its own growth and power.