The AI of Switzerland
By W. F. Twyman, Jr.
One of my favorite readers observed I lived in the AI of Switzerland as a writer. There is safety and little risk in worrying about the coming one to three years. I thank the reader for his comments and offer this preliminary defense of an imperfect muddle, to borrow a phrase from Yale Law School professor Stephen L. Carter. The stakes are very high for humanity and this assessment comes from insiders in the know, not just little old me.
“AI is a hope killer and a bargain killer. It takes away any realistic hope of the vast majority of people making money because eventually 80-90% won’t/don’t work because they can’t compete with a machine. If AI can do the job(s) of a human more quickly, efficiently, cheaply, and arguably better (we are seeing this occur already in a fringe capacity) then the human worker becomes obsolete. And with that goes the entire premise of merit-based reward. When people can no longer sell their labor or skills or expertise, the dream of “earning your way up” dies. You take away purpose, dignity, and meaning. Suddenly, people aren’t just poor – they’re irrelevant. And that is vastly more demoralizing and destabilizing.”
We humans suffer from a short-term bias. We feel most strongly what appears on the screen today, this moment. We are not wired to think about, and worry about, our future selves. There is a cheeky episode where Homer Simpson essentially throws caution to the wind, engages in debauchery, and ignores his self destruction. “That’s a problem for future Homer. Man, I don’t envy that guy!”
In my life and as a writer, I worry about future Homer. I distrust the herd since the herd is vulnerable to group think. Far better to be a first mover and a visionary about the sandstorm in the distance. These are the things I enjoy writing about. Remember my conflicted relationship with race as as writer? I really, really don’t like to be backwards leaning in my writing. We cannot rewrite the past. We do have the greatest potential to shape the future. And that character shapes my writing, the things I care enough to write about.
A writer somewhere in the universe took me to task for not knowing who John Wick was. I couldn’t tell you “Adam” about John Wick and my lack of awareness disturbed the young intellectual and thinker. “How can you be a great writer if you are not observant about the human condition?” I was crestfallen but, the more I thought about it, the more I felt I should learn about John Wick and why does the culture find Wick interesting.
Someday, I will write that essay.
Meanwhile and for now, I care about my Jewish friends, one who is stranded at an airport in Poland and the other whose son is scared to death in Tel Aviv as the missiles and bombs drop all around. I care about war and achieving peace at the center of it all.
I also care right now about this alien intelligence on the calendar with a due date approaching.
“The world looks different when AI takes the majority if not all of the jobs and nobody works, or can work. The world looks different when hope is gone, when honing a valuable trade or skill no longer holds value and serves no purpose, and there is no pride in a job well done or a craft or art well-learned.”
Am I living in the AI of Switzerland as a writer? Hmmn, this is a pretty sorry Switzerland for my money. Like I find myself watching a young niece graduate from college and feeling pain for her future job prospects. I find myself more and more living in slow time and fast time. This is not an unique sensation. I learned the other day that AI writers, young people with their whole lives ahead of them, are living in slow time when with friends and fast time as they find themselves in AI world with shorter and shorter time frames. How can one plan for law school and graduation in the Class of 2029 if the world could be totally upended by AI before decade’s end? I’m an old guy but I find myself shifting between slow time and fast time too.
My Last Five Years of Work Allow me to quote from the twenty-five year old Avital Balwit, Chief of Staff to CEO Dario Amodei at Anthropic: “I am 25. These next five years might be the last few years that I work…I stand at the edge of a technological development that seems likely, should it arrive, to end employment as I know it…But, I believe that if we really think these systems will be able to replace us, there is no reason to believe they will not also be able to help us in our search for meaning.”
Do we want a world where a young woman under 30 must turn to alien intelligence for meaning? This is not the AI of Switzerland. This is something more…existential.
“Even if there’s only a 20% chance that AI gets to the point where it has the ability to wipe out our society, shouldn’t we all be talking about this? In fact, shouldn’t this be the ONLY thing anyone is talking about? It’s existential. Even a 20% chance of AI-driven civilizational collapse should galvanize us into action. But instead, we are paralyzed – divided, distracted, and disincentivized by systems optimized for short-term individual gain over long-term collective survival.”
Conclusion: There is no peace at the center in the AI of Switzerland. I desire peace at the center in life. It is very Quaker of me. Instead, I live in slow time with young family members as they enjoy the turning points of life. And at nights and on the weekends, situational awareness brings me back into fast time once again. Late 2025, Early 2026, Late 2026, 2027…
"Peace at the center" refers to the idea of finding inner peace and strength within oneself, particularly during challenging times. It implies a deep sense of personal stability and resilience that allows one to weather external storms of criticism, conflict, or hardship. This internal peace is often associated with a strong sense of self, a clear conscience, or a connection to something greater, like faith or a moral compass. — AI Overview
Good evening and I wish you all genuine, long lasting peace at the center!
Ok. This is a good reply and I am chastened by the village elder. I’m also irritated as I also should be a village elder (I meet the age qualification…) and shouldn’t have displayed the need for chastening. I exhibited more concern for what others may think of the writer than for what the writer is thinking. I was glib and self-indulgent. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln Mr. Smith, how was the comment?
Yes, AI is a terrifying prospect. Human endeavor, human creativity, human sense of belonging and of value, of being needed, what will happen to these things? Being created in the image of God; being dependent upon and grateful to God – a God who gives us the spark of creativity, of love, and of duty, but who remains mysterious within clouds and fires, this is meaningful to us - to some as divine truth, to others as revealing, though human-made, metaphor.
When god shows up as AI it is horrifying because we know this is of our own creation, but we can’t
Ok. This is a good reply and I am chastened by the village elder. I’m also irritated as I also should be a village elder (I meet the age qualification…) and shouldn’t have displayed the need for chastening. I exhibited more concern for what others may think of the writer than for what the writer is thinking. I was glib and maybe self-indulgent. Other than that....
Yes, AI is a terrifying prospect. Human endeavor, human creativity, human sense of belonging and of value, of being needed, what will happen to these things? Being created in the image of God, being dependent upon and grateful to God – a God who gives us the spark of creativity, of love, and of duty, but who remains mysterious within clouds and fires, this is meaningful to us - to some as divine truth, to others as revealing, though human-made, metaphor.
When god shows up as AI it is horrifying because we know this is of our own creation, but we can’t
stop it and we don’t know where it’s power will end and we don’t see in it any place for love or for our own creativity, nor can we understand what duties or meaning will remain for us, living with this god.
It is not comforting to hear the prophetic speech of this god’s priests:
“I am 25. These next five years might be the last few years that I work…I stand at the edge of a technological development that seems likely, should it arrive, to end employment as I know it…But, I believe that if we really think these systems will be able to replace us, there is no reason to believe they will not also be able to help us in our search for meaning.”
Prophets should be graybeards painfully acquainted with failed utopian dreams, with the notion of the tragic flaw - that it may exist in those who are otherwise noble and clear-sighted - and with the dangers of human pride revealed in the story of the Tower of Babel. Whether taken (as I take it) to express spiritual truth from on high, or as allegory expressing ancient human wisdom, there’s something profound about the folly of humankind aspiring to god-like knowledge or enterprise. Did we do that with the industrial revolution? With atom-splitting? With the algorithm?
Of course, we have a problem today that probably was not shared by those building the tower in the land of Shinar: If we don’t create, maintain, and disseminate our AI more effectively than (insert preferred list of rogue or rogue-ish states), then we will become extinct or exist only as vassals of (same list). We tenuously hold the notion we can contain the dispersion of the nuclear bomb. We have no such illusions about AI.
Which suggests the story of the genie who gets out of the bottle. Or of the mother of us all who could not (as we cannot) un-eat the forbidden fruit, which had no peace at its center. That part comes later.
Thanks for your patience with those of us who are not quite village elders, and not quite village idiots.