Does AI Enhance or Replace Civilization

 

Does AI Enhance or Replace Civilization?

The above magazine cover, from the beginning of Trump’s presidency in 2017, was beyond prescient, mild if you will. His latest term shows that Mr Trump is neither stable nor a genius. There are strong signs of mental and physical deterioration, a mysterious MRI (that was obviously not routine despite statements to the contrary), a hand that never heals, excessive (even for Trump) name-calling, falling asleep at multiple high-level meetings, at home and abroad… side-by-side comparisons with Joe Biden’s mental fall from grace suggest that Trump is in far worse shape. And while Republicans are slowly separating from “all Trump, all the time,” his dark shadow and his failed appointments are increasingly clear. But Trump the destroyer makes it hard to believe he was once a builder. Look at his unilateral destruction (above) of the White House.

His obsession with artificial intelligence, combined with a belief that if there are any rules that might apply to this devastating technology, we will lose the AI race with China (even as we have approved the sale of high-level AI chips to them)… and his billionaire “who cares what AI does to the little people” tech bros… hell-bent to a wild west uncontrolled AI, such that on December 11th, Trump signed an executive order banning any states from containing AI in any way (see above). Is that order even legal? Writing for the December 12th Associated Press, Jonathan Cooper explains what those state efforts have been and where they were heading:

“Four states — Colorado, California, Utah and Texas — have passed laws that set some rules for AI across the private sector, according to the International Association of Privacy Professionals… Those laws include limiting the collection of certain personal information and requiring more transparency from companies… The laws are in response to AI that already pervades everyday life... The technology helps make consequential decisions for Americans, including who gets a job interview, an apartment lease, a home loan and even certain medical care. But research has shown that it can make mistakes in those decisions, including by prioritizing a particular gender or race.

“States’ more ambitious AI regulation proposals require private companies to provide transparency and assess the possible risks of discrimination from their AI programs… Beyond those more sweeping rules, many states have regulated parts of AI: barring the use of deepfakes in elections and to create nonconsensual porn, for example, or putting rules in place around the government’s own use of AI.” But I’m watching Gen Z grads finding fewer job opportunities, fewer people leaving old jobs, and vast swaths of clerical workers finding their expected jobs filled with AI alternatives. In the legal profession, legal research, drafting briefs and filing documents, reviewing vast pages of documents looking for facts, suggestions for legal strategies, evaluating whether cases are worth taking, etc. have changed law school values across the land. And that’s just one example. Simply, whole categories of jobs are disappearing, never to return.

China already infuses most of their digital consumer goods with AI in a big way. The US seems only interested in the home run, breakthrough without the slightest concern about what happens to people. But then, Trump has never shown any empathy. Writing for the December 13th FastCompany.com, Anna-Louise Jackson, a freelance writer and editor with more than 15 years of experience covering financial markets, the economy, personal finance, and business trends, asks the big question with this headline: Is humanity on a collision course with AI? Why the downsides need to be reckoned with soon.

“Researchers on the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) and leaders of many of the major platforms—from Geoffrey Hinton to Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk—have voiced concerns that AI could lead to the destruction of humanity itself.

“Even the stated odds from some of these AI experts, with an end-days scenario as high as 25%, are still ‘wildly optimistic,’ according to Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and coauthor of the recent best-selling book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies… That’s because, as he argues in the book, the track we’re on with AI is headed for disaster—unless something radically changes. The book, cowritten with researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, explores potential threats posed by “superintelligence,” or theoretical AI systems that are smarter than humans.

“‘We’re sort of growing these AIs that act in ways nobody asked for, that have these drives and emergent behaviors nobody intended,’ Soares said at last month’s World Changing Ideas Summit, cohosted by Fast Company and Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C… ‘If we get superhumanly intelligent AIs that are pursuing ends nobody wanted, I think the default outcome is that literally everybody on earth dies,’ he added… Likening the work of some AI leaders to building an airplane while flying with no landing gear, Soares said that not enough attention is being paid to the technology’s potentially negative outcomes.

“The amount of global investment being poured into AI shows that people are betting it won’t be a ‘total dud,’ he said, but there are two other ‘crazy’ options: AI radically automates all human labor, so the economy is captured by a very small group, or it becomes super intelligent and kills everyone.” But it is patently clear, no one really understands the ramifications of AI, not even its engineer-creators. And when politicians speak to the public about AI, they can be naïve Dems with pablum on their tongues or AI hucksters looking to make money for themselves or their cronies.

They don’t really know what they are talking about, but a good lie might get them elected somewhere cool. Writing for the December 9th Puck.com, Peter Hamby, notes this stylistic contrast: “Do Democrats even know how to talk about A.I., let alone muster the will to rein it in? Like anything tech-related, some politicians do, some don’t, and others earnestly admit they still have a lot to learn. I got a glimpse of the learning curve at last weekend’s Democratic Governors Association meeting in Phoenix, where dozens of sitting governors and candidates descended on the palm-lined Arizona Biltmore Resort. Amy Acton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor in Ohio, told me she’d arrived at the hotel in an A.I.-powered Waymo—her first time riding in an autonomous vehicle. ‘My partner, who often drives me, was sitting in the back seat, and he said, ‘I just lost my job on the way over!’

“Acton was among those who admitted she has much to learn about A.I. policy, and said her team was ‘digging deep’ into it. ‘It is going to be disruptive,’ she said, ‘but we have to figure out how to harness it for good.’ The good? She cited workforce training in education. The bad? Energy prices. There are almost 200 data centers in Ohio, including several run by hyperscalers Google, Meta, and Amazon. When Acton talks about skyrocketing energy bills, she sounds like Mikie Sherrill, New Jersey’s new governor-elect, who made much of her campaign about exactly that issue.

“But Acton is running against Vivek Ramaswamy who, despite his blabbermouth tendencies, hails from the private sector and talks about the issue with far more expertise than his rival. ‘How do you avoid social unrest? How do you have an entire generation that could be, in some sectors, … displaced by A.I.?’ Ramaswamy said on a recent Fox News segment devoted entirely to such technological disruption, as well as his plans to protect Gen Z from white-collar job displacement. His solution was convoluted—replacing federal entitlements with stock market accounts so that young people can build wealth on the back of A.I. growth—but he at least sounded A.I. fluent.” The stock market suggestion is a full-on “stupid”…. But without a whole lot more in the way of meaningful guidelines in place, what’s the worst that can happen? Exactly!!!

I’m Peter Dekom, and perhaps we are all playing with matches in a dynamite factory… and letting a man with clean signs of mental decay tells why we must.