Is AI the Enemy or the People Controlling It?

What we agree on can start a revolution.

I saw this exchange in my comments:

Before we address this disagreement, I want to establish that what we agree on is far more powerful than our differences. In fact, despite whatever differences we have, the one big thing we agree on is enough for us to come together to start a revolution that changes the world.

So let’s start with where we agree.

With respect to tech and society, I think we can all agree on 3 things:

1. Technology and society are largely controlled by enemies of the people (anti-human, anti-consent executives, elites, and corrupt politicians)

2. These enemies of the people are using our entire system (including technology), to control, manipulate, and exploit people, while deceptively claiming they are using it to benefit humanity

3. Unequal economic opportunity and access to resources is at the core of the unfairness and injustice of our society

With respect to AI (including robotics here), we can all agree on three more things:

4. AI could be the most powerful technology ever created

5. Control of AI is dangerously concentrated in the hands of enemies of the people

6. Because of this, much of AI development is a threat to humanity and we urgently need to take power over AI out of the hands of these enemies of the people

The ONE BIG THING we all agree on:

We must come together to reform society to make it economically fair and to take power over technology, especially AI, out of the hands of anti-human, anti-consent executives, elites, and corrupt politicians.

Where we may disagree: How we approach AI

Now this is where all of us who agree (which I’d argue is a majority of society), fall into three camps about AI:

1. AI is a double-edged sword

   Like any technology, AI is a reflection of the people that are building it. AI has immense potential for good and evil, but presently antihuman billionaires, executives, and politicians largely control AI. This combined with a fundamentally unfair society are what make many aspects of current AI development an existential threat to the human race. And I’m not talking about the terminator style killer robots that may exist sometime in the future when we reach AI superintelligence (although that possibility exists as well). I’m talking about the clear and present danger we have right now: these antihuman humans racing towards ruling us all without our consent with their monopoly on immensely powerful AI.
   

   Their dangerous AI development is currently concentrating unprecedented power in the hands of a few unelected Ai executives and investors who seek to use AI to dominate the present and future. Instead of being built to create human flourishing, these people are building AI to completely replace almost the entire human race. We face catastrophic and immediate risks of oppression at their hands, including mass unemployment, surveillance, and the death of human freedom.
   
   AI should only be developed if we can wrestle it out of the hands of these antihuman elites, and if there is special, democratic consent for doing so. It must be developed in a limited, ethical fashion, primarily as tools that make us healthier, enhance our freedom, and give us more time to spend doing the things we love with the people we care about.
   

   We should have an open debate about what that looks like in practice. And I will write more about this elsewhere because this is a complex topic. But we must establish bright lines as well to prevent the truly bad things AI should never be be developed for even if we do collectively decide to develop AI (e.g. biological weapons, autonomous weapons, a social credit system, AI mass surveillance, AI deepfakes, AI-slop and AI-generated art).
   

   In our current world where AI is largely developed by antihuman people, there are many bad uses, but there are ways we can still use it for profound good. And we should use it in limited ways to protect ourselves along with fighting back against and reforming a broken system.

2. AI is too dangerous to even develop

   AI development will eventually inevitably lead to superhuman intelligence, and this will destroy humanity. Given that, we must destroy AI.

3. There is nothing good about AI

   AI has no good uses, and it’s unethical to use it or develop it at all. Given that, we must never develop any form of AI and we should destroy any AI that exists.

Whatever camp you fall into, the simple fact is we are all on the same team in this fight for a fairer world and against the elites, billionaires, and politicians that control society, tech, and AI. We shouldn’t be fighting each other. We should be coming together to reform society and take power back from the enemies of the people. And once we take that power back from them, then we can determine how the future of AI looks in our hands, including slowing down, pausing, or stopping AI development altogether.

Personally I fall into camp A. I’ll write more about why elsewhere. But the short answer is that in general I think technology reflects the people that control it, and I believe there are good people in the world that can create good tools with it that improve human health, and give us more time to spend doing the things we are passionate about and enjoying moments with the people we love. I believe in humanity’s ability to create and use technology ethically, even though the anti-humans who have created much of our technology so far have fallen so short of doing so.

That said, I welcome debate from all camps on this. Let’s just remember we agree on the biggest things and fight back together for the future of humanity before its too late. Once we have the power over AI, we can decide what we do with it.