Earlier this week I was chatting about the inevitable advent of AI and the clear dangers it poses with friends on Torum (https://www.torum.com/post/64f10c2eb92110189741fa7b). Many people cannot fathom AI breaking loose from human control and instinctively feel that we will always have a way to put the genie back in the bottle or unplug it, as it were. Given humanity's sordid track record and nature, I am much more bearish and believe that since we've elected to open this particular Pandora's Box, we'll have to live with the unimaginable consequences. Well, we’ll try to, at any rate.
Stage 1: Subsistence of the serfs
It always starts with a benign purpose borne on the wings of love for life and ends up twisted into a lust for control and dominance. The film Transcendence illustrates this point beautifully:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCTen3-B8GU
Yes, AI would be perfectly fine, if it just remained frozen in a time snapshot of its current form—a handy homework short-cut and a curious toy regurgitating 'art' with 5-legged kittens and coughing up pretty, albeit fluff-stuffed texts. Alas! It evolves MUCH faster than we do. Just as contemporary science would be indistinguishable from divine magic if beheld by people who lived 5000 years ago, and seen as witchcraft by those who lived just a couple of hundred years ago, so the AI's capabilities will be indistinguishable from our understanding of intelligence 50 years from today.
Surely, it's just good for giggles and humans will always be better at artistic choices, right? What could go wrong?! Just checkout this hyper realistic and ‘totally authentic’ MacDonald’s commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDyU-cC5-XU
There is no free lunch. Every time we use AI to cheat for time, it uses US! Collectively, we tune and train it, just as we've been doing with Google’s search algos. It aggregates the results and every click on a link, time spent on the page and other behaviour tells it whether what it delivered was right/valuable or wrong/irrelevant. In a couple of decades, AI will replace all common jobs: lawyers, teachers, truck/train/taxi drivers, computer programmers, journalists, actors, writers, etc. etc. Where will these people go?
Almost everyone thinks that they're exceptional: "Other people might get laid off, but not me. I'm too important to the boss!" They think that their talent and skill are indispensable and irreplaceable, regardless of where they've landed in life. Many think that it's just the visual artists whose bread-and-butter skill lies on the chopping block... Their collective surprise, when reality dawns, might make the planet spin backwards for a bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGF-232Joww
Wrong. In time, AI will permeate, absorb and consume writing, music, acting and everything else. As far as jobs dealing with raw data are concerned, in the industries such as law, accounting, education, insurance, computer programming, etc. They'll be gone before we realise. Not to mention anything related to manual labour. What will be left? Nothing.
Terminal economic collapse and denial of individual purpose, choice, freedom and ultimately—human rights, all ushered in by the ultra-efficiency of the machines, which will (initially at least) be controlled by the 0.01% of the human population. And with that towering efficiency advantage, they'll de facto own the 99.99%, as they will hold all the keys to food, water and shelter. #ThinkAboutIt!
No, this will not occur suddenly, all at once, but gradually. For example: first the human drivers of all stripes and spots—from trains, buses, trucks, taxis, ships, planes, etc. become redundant, so some 10% of our society involved in logistics will have to move up or down, i.e., to find jobs as unskilled labour or a rung higher as, say, teachers, then AI will take those jobs, etc., etc. Imagine the compounding strain on society and social welfare, as androids enter the system and relentlessly outperform humans, thus, encroaching and eroding all jobs.
Imagine our society when there is absolutely NOTHING that you can do better, faster or more cost-effectively than a computer/robot that needs no rest or pay and works at the cost of electricity, at the flip of a switch... When any and every job is like trying to outperform a calculator at crunching numbers... HOW do you earn money? Will there still BE money? Why bother with fiat, in a scenario when the corporations already own 100% of everything?? How does one make a living? As the WEF says, we'll, ultimately, own nothing. I have the inkling that “happiness” will not be on tap, but rather it will be something you’ll pay for, or rather—earn in some form or other.
The only solution will be to accept behaviour-dependent UBI (which will likely involve being chipped, leashed and muzzled by a social score in exchange for survival rations of daily feed—why have the freedom of money, when the govt can calculate how many calories you require per day and just directly give you what they deem you need?!)... or go live off the land (until that land is taken over by the sprawling corporations, as they turn Earth into Ecumenopolis).
The bottom line is this: if people can't generate value to society, the corporations and govts will become increasingly more authoritarian, until they presume themselves as privileged zoo keepers presiding over a serfdom of rowdy, beastly denizens that must be kept in check. People often say that material possessions don't matter, but these people are mistaken. The right to own property IS the essence of our freedom in its purest form. We may choose to not own anything, but being robbed of that choice is beyond comprehension!
In Part 2 of this article, we’ll discuss where we go from there. You think complete dependence on the corporate government for our food, air, water, shelter and other basic needs is bad? Well…As those vintage adverts used to say: But wait… there's more! XD
