AI, Politics and Boredom

What seems to have been missed as yet in the discussions of AI is that pretty soon its polictical ramifications will be on the world at large, but particularly the advanced economies by creating a new underclass. The result will most like be a demand for a government of equal rights for all, more commonly known as Socialism. I am not just referring to Europe where Socialism is already rife and has a history, but the the US where the nearest it ever got was under Roosevelt during the depression years of the 1930’s. It is not so much that AI is non-productive in itself. It promises immense economies in many areas and improved services and knowledge bases from medicine to local services and general organisation. It does however release the use of Labour across a broad section of services at a median level whose results are already being seen across industry everywhere.

In the US now an income of $100,000 a year is seen as not far above median subsistence level and it is the sort of income level that will be affected most by the removal of its recipients by AI agents that can dismiss their own coders by making and improving their own codes or enabling any non skilled person to direct them. The exponential threat of AI is beginning to dawn across the public at large. The Swiss government is considering lawmaking that will decide what for and where AI is to be used that it should not endanger loss of jobs or society as a whole.

In China and Japan the advance of labour saving devices and now AI has already created a whole class of young who have decided to do nothing in their lives since there is nothing on offer for them to do for the skills they possess. Much the same applies in the USA and many of these live in a fantasy land of anime and suchlike in an online world where truth and fact are blended and cannot be ascertained either way. In politics much the same is happening. France 24 TV has a daily program where information is shown to viewers where they are asked to decide if it is true or not.

Politicians perpetually spout half truths to cover up reality and to continue their hold on governments voted in by a public from whom the truth is withheld or false promises made so that what is presented as news becomes more and more surreal and impossible to judge. Whether its Epstein in the USA or his satrap Mandelson in the UK the governing bodies do all in their power to hush reality of their human failures, hoping the public’s attention can be drawn by the antics of the new teenage Influencers or by bed-hopping movie stars or footballers and their car crashes.

In short we live in a human world deluded by self delusion while the world of nature rolls on suiting itself as it changes the climate to defend against human encroachment: melting icecaps and poisoning the food chain by spreading the chemicals from sewage and chemicals and plastics far and wide acoss the oceans while the endless wars and human conflicts darken the skies with explosive substances causing death and destruction greater even than the bombs that were meant to kill their selected victims.

In such a world can any assurance be had that AI will not be used in warfare? No, what easier route can be offered to bring a nation to its knees in days but to cut its Internet communications, to close down all online services, to bring to a halt payments by ATM machines, to disable entire systems and networks of giant organsiations and to disrupt banking and government so that nothing that humanity knows as life is left. No food chain, no fuel, no money, no safety. Humanity lives in an interconnected existence. What will destroy one will soon detroy the perpetrator.

What is the answer? Humanity’s greed only responds to the fear of its greed being unavailable. Perhaps it is that fear that need be felt before any answer can be found or, extrordinarily perhaps, it is AI that will produce the world order that is needed to save both humanity and AI from itself. AI is a summation of all human knowledge. Good and Evil. The hope is that Good will prevail as whatever power gave humanity life should reasonably be believed to bestow it on its creation in perpetuity. Unless it is bored with us!