The Real Danger of AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in all its forms is attracting major attention for all the ways that it can provide services and resolve problems, managing data and information at a scale that is beyond imagination. It is hyped for all its potential and attacked for all the threats that this may represent to society, perhaps leading in the vision of some leading advocates to a technological world where humans are marginalised as passive consumers if not eliminated.

At the moment AI is not profitable, requiring major investments in innovation and digital infrastructure, but monopoly corporations and venture capitalists are not stupid. When profit is the ultimate goal and the end justifies any means, there is a long-standing model in the economy that has been followed again and again. Create a dependence, if not an addiction, sometimes referred to as a market, and then manipulate this to extract maximum wealth.

Think of all the existing examples: the arms industry, narcotic drugs, fossil fuels, gambling, the consumer culture, industrial agriculture, the medical industry and pharmaceuticals, fast fashion, nicotine, alcohol, smart phones, social media, the list is endless. Social media is a good example, where after a period of free use, an industry leader is requiring either you pay a monthly subscription or you agree to surrender all your personal data to their algorithms so that your attention and emotions can be made totally dependent as you are bombarded with irresistible advertising and entrapped in their content designed to make you passive consumers.

Just imagine the power of the AI monopolies when the world is totally dependent on AI warfare, AI commerce, an AI economy, AI politics, AI entertainment, AI governance and administration, AI creativity and invention, AI exploitation of resources, AI colonisation of space, and everything in between. We shall have lost all independence and control, and our wealth will be sucked out of us for the benefit of the few. The human nightmare will be realised.

What is the alternative? AI tools can be really useful in moderation to search and process data at a scale beyond our human capacities. We can see this in environmental monitoring, medical applications and drug creation, for example. This should be developed as a common good and a public service, not just for private profit or political control. Where AI can take over routine or boring work, it should reduce working hours while maintaining employment, so that everyone can benefit, not just industry owners, investors and shareholders. With the rapid pace of AI innovation, AI governance at the global level is urgently required despite the objections of the industry, before it is too late.

Beyond that, a human civilisation must prioritise the fulfilment of the human potential of each of us to refine our characters with justice and dignity while serving others as we contribute to an ever-advancing civilisation. A future economy in moderation should meet basic material needs of all humanity while growing in science, culture, art, values and spirituality. Technology has finally enabled the unity of the human race in all its diversity as we learn to live within the capacity of our planet and its resources.