Progress studies

Working definition

A subfield helmed by podcaster and provocateur Tyler Cowen, closely affiliated with the EA and AI safety movements. Cowen argued that the United States in particular needs a 'science of progress,' pointing to its decline in a number of areas. This kind of framing gets used to justify AI accelerationism and anti-regulatory arguments.

Questions to ask

• What kinds of waste might be produced in the pursuit of technological 'progress' at all costs?
• How might a narrow framing of the pursuit of progress eschew social and communal responses to the defining issues of our time?

Usages in annotated documents

No usages in published documents yet.