AI: An Argument Against Data Imperialism
10/16/2022 10:40 AM MST
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is obviously doing much good in the world these days. DeepMind has uncovered the structures of a vast amount of proteins. However, it is also causing concern, particularly among artists who believe it will cost them jobs and future revenue. AI is becoming capable of writing code and thus gaining the potential to improve upon itself. All of this is happening is quite a flurry, with the AI market poised to continue rapid growth. Balancing the benefits with the obvious dangers is going to be a key issue to resolve in the coming months and years.
However, what efforts are being undertaken to safeguard artist’s livelihoods, and even more importantly, to safeguard our lives in the event of an AGI explosion. Vox has a decent article discussing the recent release from the White House regarding their AI ethics blueprint. While it seems to do a good job at outlining the issues currently affecting employment discrimination, it fails to address the upcoming class crisis that seems inevitable. From the previously mentioned article:
‘“I think there’s going to be a carrot-and-stick situation,” Meredith Broussard, a data journalism professor at NYU and author of Artificial Unintelligence, told me. “There’s going to be a request for voluntary compliance. And then we’re going to see that that doesn’t work — and so there’s going to be a need for enforcement.”’
It’s (I believe) becoming more clear, or at least it should be, to most Americans that the business world and even the political world is slanted towards the most greedy American’s interests. The issue with enforcement, is that it goes against the philosophy and approach of these businesses most likely. One could argue that establishing unions would lead to some improvement when it comes to these issues, but I fear it won’t do enough. I think it may be time to reconsider or revise some fundamental aspects of society, namely capitalism.
With the modern era has come the proliferation of goods and services. All of this being credited every step of the way to human greed and ingenuity. And the system historically has worked and led to great prosperity. However, with AI potentially threatening the livelihood of the vast majority of humans, we ought to make efforts to start changing society now instead of waiting until AI has taken over and then having to fight our way back to power.
One may look to the influence of Karl Marx when thinking about a future society. There will likely be little necessary work to do, but it will be highly contested either for the honor, land, breeding rights, or whatever else we decide the reward ought to be for doing it. One may argue that we need to create a separate economy with new rules and regulations in order to isolate the risks to the normal economy. As AI greatly relies on public works, one can argue that AI ought to be a public work itself. Sure one could say that AI could be build without the use of public works, but I’d say to counter that it’s far too late to do this, and it would be impossible to prove that public works weren’t used in some way to construct AI.
Perhaps the one exception would be for military applications, as the public obviously can’t be trusted with highly advanced weapons or even defense systems that could be used to hold hostages. One potential future AI application I see being highly useful is a facial lie detector app. Obviously the results won’t be permissible as evidence right away, but at least this could be useful in business arrangements or when meeting clients. This is going off on a tangent somewhat, but it gets to the root of the issue: we are surrounded by liars and thieves. The only way our society will survive is if we become aware and dispose of them as soon as possible.