Morality, Politics, Economics: The Three Pillars to Establish Firmly before the AGI takeover
10/29/2022 1:43 AM MST
artificial intelligence, politics
All three domains: morality, politics, and economics are tied together. Morality influences politics and economic decision making. Politics obviously influences morality and dictates economic policies. And economics affects morale decision making and political direction.
To elaborate further, a healthy country likely has a strong moral foundation, otherwise the individual citizens won’t contribute to the greater good. Morality establishes religions, which commonly influence politics. Politics establishes taxes, trade tariffs, etc. which influence economics directly. The return link between economics and morality can be seen in terms of effects such as drug use, and other avenues of escaping depravity such as sexual abuse. This is due to scarcity of goods, properties, etc. commonly, unless it’s due to insanity or tragedy.
In America we abide by a system of capitalism. Living in such a system, it seems like such a lens is valuable in examining other countries as well. Certainly they have to cope with our capitalistic presence, so they must compete within it to keep up with other neighboring countries. To consider changing our system would require obviously a moral and political change; a tenuous task. However, I do believe that alternative systems should be researched and proposed, as I fear that regulation is nothing more than a wack-a-mole attempt at putting out fires.
One route that ought to be explored is motivating religious groups in an economic fashion versus a moral one. Perhaps this is already how they are most effective; unfortunately I do not know. Churches, synagogues, and other religious houses serve as a natural nexus of discussion and organization of suggestions to government or if need be, protests. Hopefully the latter can be avoided by active political involvement with such groups.
Police and other essential service workers also need to remain involved with both religious (optionally) and political groups in order to remain part of the peaceful political process. Politics and media are obviously interconnected, however people still lack publishing power. Social media has done some good to correct this, however people are still learning to cope with the inundation of information.
As a side note, because I believe it to be pertinent to current affairs, AGI/AI’s influence on the entire trinity also needs careful consideration. It could obviously benefit the process greatly, or end up hindering or destroying it entirely. I believe the only way we can survive this new wave of technology is to urgently update the law to account for its effects. Certainly AI could be used to advise the law making process by helping to close loop holes and make certain the language is effectual.
The function of the law should be to sustain economic progress in a moral fashion (one that can be advertised to the rest of the world freely.) Especially with the rapid takeover of state propaganda in Russia infused with modern technology, it’s a wonder any sane person in America can sleep at this point. Once they get their hands on AI technology from China, which seems likely at this point, although one speculates that it will come at a steep price, war with the west seems inevitable.
I firmly believe that the domestic security and economy must be our primary concern, if we have any hope of winning or curtailing a war against us. More optimistically, if no threat of war comes, we need to maintain constant economic progress unless laws are created to limit procreation which no one seems to want. Of course this is likely still far off, but should be something that is considered.
With the power of Silicon Valley in our hands, metaphorically speaking of course as I’m sure they’d take offense to being handled physically (that happens enough already when they don’t want it) we ought to be designing political tools to get people engaged in the process. Part of this I believe should be encouraging social media competitors as the options are depressingly lacking and the only real movement is the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk.
I’m hopeful by his words that he intends to maintain free speech on the platform, however due to his known skill as a micro-manager I have a feeling that AI is likely to play a pivotal role in moderating the platform. However, with great power comes great responsibility, and I fear politicians sinful words will influence him to censor topics that are prudent to social evolution, or worse that companies will stop marketing efforts preventing competition from entering the market.
In order to prevent this, I suggest the most obvious thing which would be to implement a regulatory body. Perhaps this could be simply community members who have access to the API mixed with some democratic voting process to determine which topics should be censored, where to publish the censored topics, and for what duration the censorship should take place before a review.
The Western World is sadly the bastion of free speech, and one of its prime advantages. When people become fearful to speak, they become fearful to think. Then they become fearful to live, and devolve into nihilism. To avoid this, free speech must be defended.