Loading ...The Risk Of AI Isn’t Skynet
The risk that AI transitions from Servant to Master is dramatically appealing–Skynet!–but the real risks are in the mundane realms of the socio-economic order. As I explain in my new book Investing In Revolution, technological revolutions share the same dynamic: those profiting from the innovations push them pell-mell, without regard for future consequences, as the goal is to expand as quickly as possible to achieve market dominance.
This is entirely understandable, as pausing to assess potential pitfalls will effectively cede control to competitors.
Society–all of civilization that isn’t reducible to financial data–bears the consequences, but over a timespan far longer than the initial expansion of the technology. In other words, the immediate rewards of the technological revolution go to the fast-moving innovators while the broader consequences–both the benefits and the downsides–impact the socio-cultural-political realms over a much longer time frame.
This creates a time-response lag, where society must absorb and assess the consequences years or even decades after the initial expansion of the technology. The organizational tool of innovators is the corporation, a financial structure with a single goal–expand revenues and profits by any means available–and a quasi-military command-control-communications (a.k.a. 3C) hierarchy.
This structure meshes perfectly with markets, which price everything in the moment: markets lack mechanisms to price future consequences; they only price production, transport, currencies, materials, marketing, inventory, etc. in the present.
In contrast, society is characterized by a multitude of interests and structures in various stages of advocacy. There is no one single goal or hierarchy, and the upsides and downsides of technological changes are typically distributed very unevenly.
Those positioned to reap the rewards gain ground, those positioned to bear the brunt of negative consequences lose ground. Each will then advocate for controls or let-it-run-wild accordingly.
The American ethos favors the let-it-run-wild and pick up the pieces later approach to technological revolutions. This serves the interests of the initial innovators and speculators, who can amass great fortunes in the initial speculative frenzy to get on board. This has played out in railroads, autos, radio, TV, the Internet, and so on.
Each revolution is characterized as creative destruction the buggy whip industry is wiped out, but a larger industry is created.
Here is where correlation is confused with causation: the fact that this cycle has played out in the recent past does not make it a Law of Nature, i.e. a predictable manifestation of causation.
Which brings us to AI. AI is different: it doesn’t generate a need for more human labor as it expands, it replaces human labor. This is its implicit raison d’etre, reason to exist.
The rewards go to the initial innovators’ corporations and speculators, and the consequences fall on a society ill-prepared to assess them, much less limit them.
AI is different in another way: it generates a compelling facsimile of human characteristics and interactions, facsimiles of thought and knowledge that we take as “real” because they’re in “our language.”
But as I explain in my book Ultra-Processed Life, these facsimiles are all processed in ways we cannot discern: everything is processed in black boxes following scripts and agendas that we can’t see.
What’s presented as an accurate representation is actually an ultra-processed distillation that leaves out everything that unwieldy or unwelcome. We’re told that what’s the screen is real, but it’s not; it’s the equivalent of an orange-colored ultra-processed, sugary, salty, greasy goo being presented as a “healthy snack alternative” to a raw carrot.
What’s being lost in substituting AI’s ultra-processed facsimiles occurs beneath our perception. We don’t notice what’s been lost, and so we can no longer make a realistic assessment: that capacity has been lost.
AI is also accelerating the process of technological change, a process that’s been accelerating for 60 years. Alvin Toffler’s 1970 book Future Shock described the disorienting nature of technology-driven change, a theme updated by Douglas Rushkoff in his 2004 book, Present Shock.
Put these dynamics together and we reach this analogy: we’re children playing with matches and gasoline in a drought-stricken forest of dry deadwood. Even as the formidable resources of big-tech corporations and the state rush to secure AI supremacy, we may have it backwards: those squandering resources to build out a state-corporate Skynet “to serve humanity” are speeding our self-destruction, while those societies that limit their exposure to AI’s ultra-processed goo will emerge as the winners rather than the losers.
Just as a reminder of what’s being gambled on AI supremacy: it’s not just financial capital, it’s everything.
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith,
My new book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition) through November. Introduction (free)
