- Joined
- Aug 17, 2019
It would be difficult to imagine a technology more revolutionary in the 21st century than “Artificial Intelligence”. A misnomer by definition, AI is not intelligence, but rather, a generative computer algorithm. These complex algorithms can “create” a wide variety of products – from cloned voices of real people, photos that have never existed, and video that is rapidly maturing in quality – from Will Smith eating spaghetti with malformed, inhuman hands, to convincing footage of a Japanese street market in winter and a fair recreation of the famous game Minecraft.
Artificial intelligence is set to be the most disruptive social and political force in the world. Artificial intelligence will be more disruptive and dangerous than nuclear weapons, not by the ability to instantly wipe out large swaths of the population and cause a nuclear holocaust, but by a slower, more sinister erosion of the ability of citizens to find meaningful employment. Companies worldwide will rejoice as they can excise the “human tax” of labor, recuperating lost profits for shareholders - continuing the destructive downward spiral of ever-more incessant profit-driven late-stage capitalism. Governments worldwide will reel from the slow loss of tax revenues, mass unemployment, and civil strife as people are displaced by machines, at a loss on how to support themselves or their families. Tales almost 170 years old stemming from the Industrial Revolution in the United States and Great Britain, with citizens expressing the same concerns we face now; the displacement of the laborer in the workplace.
The significant challenge that Artificial Intelligence presents is immeasurable and inevitable. Within 10 years – almost certainly sooner – we will no longer be able to differentiate between AI-generated media and “real” media recorded and produced by human beings. Autocratic countries will own the tools you and I use to write our essays and generate funny images of wizards in Arby's. Those autocratic countries will use AI-generated media to cause unrest, strife, and social discord. Political campaigns use this technology to portray themselves positively and demonize their opponents. The Donald Trump 2024 campaign has been caught using AI multiple times to try and win over black voters. The DeSantis campaign used AI Voice software to have a machine in Donald Trump's voice read tweets that Trump created. While DeSantis' use was more innocent, since they were words Trump did write, it sets a bad precedent on how to use such tools responsibly.
Lawmakers and corporate leaders struggle with how to regulate this potent software. While the European Union has introduced some regulations, these will be outdated in a fortnight. American Lawmakers will try and create a framework for "responsible usage" as they have with other internet-age technologies, a means to create something, anything, familiar for regulatory bodies to work on a familiar structure. Initial attempts at a framework will inevitably fail. Attempts to instate a more sophisticated regulatory framework may bore sweeter fruit, at the cost of precious time. Lawmakers will experience difficulty grasping the long-term impacts of the technology that will come to replace many of their constituents in the workplace. The more cynical side of me ponders if any of them, given the average age of a lawmaker in 2024, will ever consider caring for a "young person's problem". Such revolutions are adopted by the crafty looking to make money before state authority clamps down and demands its tithes. Ergo, such revolutions cannot be contained until the proper mindset on how to interface with Artificial Intelligence is developed for the layman.
A chaotic premise for a machine with the entire collection of archived and published human knowledge - all 12,000 years of it, by every person who has ever written. A desire to don rose-tinted glasses for a simpler, less chaotic past is understandable but misguided. We cannot turn back the clock. We cannot be Luddites, wishing or acting for this technology to disappear. Long-held philosophical and practical positions on truth, labor, knowledge, research, intelligence collection and analysis, food pricing, hiring decisions, battle tactics - quite literally everything that is a human concept - will have to be re-evaluated and modified on the consideration of a machine that knows everything. Such is the means to an end in which corporations and governments now hold even greater authority over already meager liberties and employees' wages. A new social contract may have to be drafted.
I am no expert on such matters. I am but a single person, writing their words into the void, hoping that anyone considers the work I have penned. I have evaluated as many opposing sources as able in an emerging field of computing and the new form of governance that will inevitably come with it, challenging the established nature of inter-state diplomatic relations, technology-information sharing, and the delicate social harmony in Western liberal democracies. Our embrace of such a future cannot be met with meekness, nor can we recoil from the responsibility of such a future driven by AI Technology.
The final responsibility for implementing such technology ultimately lies on the shoulders of policymakers. While corporate America is the biggest forward driver of the technology, how it is used must be explicitly tackled by Congress and other regulatory bodies. Such outcomes can be influenced by a vigorous public debate with input from the people it will most affect - working-class and middle-class Americans. Again, however, I doubt that the outcome of any policymaking choice will have any positive effect on these groups. Instead, as has been a constant trend in history, only those at the top of the fiscal chain will see any benefits, with the rest being given table scraps.
If the words of this opinion give you pause on the technological revolution just over the horizon, then this piece would have been worth it.
This is the first entry in a series that I'm penning to practice my writing and analytical skills. More posts will come soon.
You are free to use, re-use, or adapt this text for personal non-commercial purposes.
Artificial intelligence is set to be the most disruptive social and political force in the world. Artificial intelligence will be more disruptive and dangerous than nuclear weapons, not by the ability to instantly wipe out large swaths of the population and cause a nuclear holocaust, but by a slower, more sinister erosion of the ability of citizens to find meaningful employment. Companies worldwide will rejoice as they can excise the “human tax” of labor, recuperating lost profits for shareholders - continuing the destructive downward spiral of ever-more incessant profit-driven late-stage capitalism. Governments worldwide will reel from the slow loss of tax revenues, mass unemployment, and civil strife as people are displaced by machines, at a loss on how to support themselves or their families. Tales almost 170 years old stemming from the Industrial Revolution in the United States and Great Britain, with citizens expressing the same concerns we face now; the displacement of the laborer in the workplace.
The significant challenge that Artificial Intelligence presents is immeasurable and inevitable. Within 10 years – almost certainly sooner – we will no longer be able to differentiate between AI-generated media and “real” media recorded and produced by human beings. Autocratic countries will own the tools you and I use to write our essays and generate funny images of wizards in Arby's. Those autocratic countries will use AI-generated media to cause unrest, strife, and social discord. Political campaigns use this technology to portray themselves positively and demonize their opponents. The Donald Trump 2024 campaign has been caught using AI multiple times to try and win over black voters. The DeSantis campaign used AI Voice software to have a machine in Donald Trump's voice read tweets that Trump created. While DeSantis' use was more innocent, since they were words Trump did write, it sets a bad precedent on how to use such tools responsibly.
Lawmakers and corporate leaders struggle with how to regulate this potent software. While the European Union has introduced some regulations, these will be outdated in a fortnight. American Lawmakers will try and create a framework for "responsible usage" as they have with other internet-age technologies, a means to create something, anything, familiar for regulatory bodies to work on a familiar structure. Initial attempts at a framework will inevitably fail. Attempts to instate a more sophisticated regulatory framework may bore sweeter fruit, at the cost of precious time. Lawmakers will experience difficulty grasping the long-term impacts of the technology that will come to replace many of their constituents in the workplace. The more cynical side of me ponders if any of them, given the average age of a lawmaker in 2024, will ever consider caring for a "young person's problem". Such revolutions are adopted by the crafty looking to make money before state authority clamps down and demands its tithes. Ergo, such revolutions cannot be contained until the proper mindset on how to interface with Artificial Intelligence is developed for the layman.
A chaotic premise for a machine with the entire collection of archived and published human knowledge - all 12,000 years of it, by every person who has ever written. A desire to don rose-tinted glasses for a simpler, less chaotic past is understandable but misguided. We cannot turn back the clock. We cannot be Luddites, wishing or acting for this technology to disappear. Long-held philosophical and practical positions on truth, labor, knowledge, research, intelligence collection and analysis, food pricing, hiring decisions, battle tactics - quite literally everything that is a human concept - will have to be re-evaluated and modified on the consideration of a machine that knows everything. Such is the means to an end in which corporations and governments now hold even greater authority over already meager liberties and employees' wages. A new social contract may have to be drafted.
I am no expert on such matters. I am but a single person, writing their words into the void, hoping that anyone considers the work I have penned. I have evaluated as many opposing sources as able in an emerging field of computing and the new form of governance that will inevitably come with it, challenging the established nature of inter-state diplomatic relations, technology-information sharing, and the delicate social harmony in Western liberal democracies. Our embrace of such a future cannot be met with meekness, nor can we recoil from the responsibility of such a future driven by AI Technology.
The final responsibility for implementing such technology ultimately lies on the shoulders of policymakers. While corporate America is the biggest forward driver of the technology, how it is used must be explicitly tackled by Congress and other regulatory bodies. Such outcomes can be influenced by a vigorous public debate with input from the people it will most affect - working-class and middle-class Americans. Again, however, I doubt that the outcome of any policymaking choice will have any positive effect on these groups. Instead, as has been a constant trend in history, only those at the top of the fiscal chain will see any benefits, with the rest being given table scraps.
If the words of this opinion give you pause on the technological revolution just over the horizon, then this piece would have been worth it.
This is the first entry in a series that I'm penning to practice my writing and analytical skills. More posts will come soon.
You are free to use, re-use, or adapt this text for personal non-commercial purposes.
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