Big AI is Accelerating the Metacrisis: What Can We Do?

Steven Bird

Abstract:

The world is in the grip of ecological, meaning, and language crises which are converging into a metacrisis. Big AI is accelerating them all. Language engineers are playing a central role, persisting with a scalability story that is failing humanity, supplying critical talent to plutocrats
and kleptocrats, and creating new technologies as if the whole endeavour was value-free. We urgently need to explore alternatives, applying our collective intelligence to design a life-affirming future for NLP that is centered on human flourishing on a living planet.