Is the Apple Vision Pro bringing "non-essential" technology?

Hot events are always short-lived, but AI-related news has continued to attract attention in the past six months. At the same time, Apple, which is considered absent in this generative AI revolution, unveiled a mixed reality wearable device Apple Vision Pro at the WWDC conference on June 5, and its extremely high degree of completion makes it stand out from similar products. Many believe that this is the first AR/VR device that can truly be used on a large scale and open up a new era. "My feeling is that the future is already here," tech blogger Chung Wenze said, holding back his excitement after being invited to try it on. In any case, the development of technology has become something that no one can avoid and must face.

But even as the Apple Vision Pro has been a hit, and is even thought to fulfill the desire of the movie Ready Player One to enter the virtual world, there have been lingering concerns about the technology, such as whether it will exacerbate the wealth gap and other inequalities - after all, in Ready Player One, the protagonist Wade, despite his gorgeous avatar in the virtual world, In reality, they live in run-down and poor neighborhoods, and they live a life of being crushed by big tech companies. In the article "Go Extinct or Adapt: It's Time for Humans to Govern AI," Joshua Bengio, known as the "Godfather of AI," also argues that the social impact of AI will be tied directly to its application and layout, and that due to the competitive nature of capitalism, making profits and capturing market share could lead to potential, uncontrolled AI.

On the other hand, ethical questions about technology have also emerged. Philosophers have long debated whether artificial intelligence will go out of control or even destroy humanity, but it has often remained at the level of science fiction, and as large companies accelerate the deployment of technologies such as AI, serious discussion of this topic is becoming more and more imminent. In May, a bipartisan U.S. senator and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said a new federal agency was needed to protect people from AI "going bad." As Bencio points out, AI systems like ChatGPT and GPT-4 have attracted a lot of attention mainly because they pass the famous Turing test, which makes it difficult to tell whether you're talking to a machine or a human, and this poses a considerable degree of danger.

"Non-essential" artificial intelligence helmet, the technological stagnation of the 21st century

Linderman: I was barely getting over the shock of ChatGPT when Apple unveiled the Vision Pro, and the number of breakthroughs in AI technology this year was dizzyful. Would it be luddite of me to say that I have no interest in the Vision Pro, or even dislike it? But I do think that technology is divided into "necessary" and "non-essential", and artificial intelligence helmets belong to the "non-essential" kind - yes, it can help us break through the limits of the naked eye and see more wonderful and rich things, but this need is created.

My biggest concern is that in an age of increasingly loose relationships, will such tools further undermine the very foundations of human society by drawing our attention further away from the world around us and into some virtual, customised, perfect world?

Xu Luqing: I also agree with the son's view, see some technical evaluation mentioned that the development cost of Vision pro and rocket SpaceX is almost similar, but all this is just to let us better immerse in the game? Or is it better to throw in 3 apps to handle work in the office?

Graeber agrees that the 21st century is an age of technological stagnation, "the pure physical power of technology itself makes us feel the wheel of history rolling forward, and now we only have screens and images to play with." Since the 1970s, he argues, our investment in technology has shifted away from technologies that will lead to a different future and toward technologies that strengthen labor discipline and social control. Technology either enhances management efficiency, surveillance capabilities, or increases consumption levels or military power. So we're going to see a lot of advances in technology to create mimics and landscapes, like the latest iPhone, like the Vision Pro. But so long after the Industrial Revolution, when people imagined technology to arrive at a world free of repetitive labor, bullshit work, and where everyone could live by their creativity, would they have thought that 200 years later, human beings would not even be able to work eight hours a day? Perhaps technological progress is never driven by real human needs, but by the logic of capital and bureaucracy.

Pan Wenjie: One of my childhood dreams is to have glasses like Ami Mizuno in Sailor Moon, which are relatively light and can directly see the outside world and be used to analyze the outside world. However, the Apple device released now is first of all a little weight, a long neck pain, and its headset is not transparent, wear it you will be immersed in the inside world, of course, you can also see the reality of the outside world through it, but it is through the front of the two cameras to shoot and return to the eye, which will certainly produce information loss. The reviews we've seen so far are that the perception of the real world is not that clear.