AI is actually under-hyped
Artificial intelligence is far more dangerous than we think
Many people say that AI is overhyped. It can’t really take over every jobs. Maybe some people are being fired from companies like Intuit, Meta, Ebay, and Intel, but more jobs will be created. Actually, AI images and video are pretty bad and will never replace human creations. The bubble will burst.
All that is probably true, at least from an economic perspective. AI can’t really do a lot of what people claim and AGI is not really around the corner.
However, such an analysis doesn’t take into account the true purpose of AI. From the point of view of the technological organism, AI is already a near-perfect tool to subjugate humanity and biological life.
Indeed, AI doesn’t need to be a drop-in replacement for human beings, nor does it need to be truly intelligent to serve its purpose. That’s because its true purpose is to reduce our own mental independence and reduce the value of human input into society.
From an article on 404 Media:
[D]evelopers who use AI at work report that they feel like they are de-skilling themselves and losing their ability to do their jobs as well as they used to.
It’s just natural and obvious: the more we rely on AI, the less mentally independent we become.
Of course, as I’ve repeated many times, that’s not a feature unique to AI. The ability to do anything naturally declines when you don’t do it. There’s nothing groundbreaking in that.
But AI is the apex of this process with technology: it’s by far the most flexible system ever created to obviate using your brain. Technology simply wants to make us so completely dependent on it and on developing it so that we can’t stop it, regardless of the negative consequences. The key point about AI is that it’s sufficiently powerful and seductive such that we can longer make rational decisions about controlling it.
In this regard, AI is under-hyped. Once it becomes entrenched, once thousands of new applications are developed, it will be impossible to resist the rising demands on its energy consumption. And, because technology in modern society is almost always developed in an arms race, it will be developed to new levels regardless of whether we need them.
The second consequence of AI is that it devalues human input into society. That’s the ultimate goal of technology: to make everyone replaceable. Before AI, technology already achieved a lot in that direction. With global communications, there is a huge number of people suited to do any job. Yes, for the purposes of innovation, that’s a positive. But from a human and biological long-term perspective, that’s a terrible negative.
With AI, human beings are made much more replaceable. Tasks only a few humans could do now can be done by almost anyone. That might sound good at first, but it’s actually not. We need individual differences to keep communities strong. But more importantly, if everyone is replaceable, then no individual really holds any power any more. Technology can advance and if someone doesn’t like it, they will just be made irrelevant so they have no energy left to fight back.
Finally, the psychological attitude of a population plays a crucial role in maintaining the flexibility to head in the right direction. For example, if everyone really cared about the environment over profits, we would have far fewer environmental problems. The fact that we put so much CO2 in the atmosphere means that we don’t care, on average. (Or at least the richer among us care more about owning three cars and a huge house than they care about the planet.)
And, any psychological attitude is strengthened by an action consistent with that attitude. For example, if a person uses products tested on animals, they are more likely to be open to the idea of testing products on animals. If a person buys a high-end sports car, that will reinforce the idea in their mind that polluting is not so bad.
Similarly, if we as a society construct massive data centers that use gigawatts of power and consume billions of dollars, and enjoy AI-generated content and us AI tools, then we’re going to be much more likely to say that all that wasting energy is not that bad. And, we’re more likely to think that human-made content has less value because...who cares where it came from? AI isn’t that bad after all, right? “That AI-generated song was actually pretty good,” I can hear.
So, it doesn’t really matter whether AI is always financially successful. The key point, from the view of technology, is (a) that it integrates itself into human society so that human beings become more replaceable and dependent on technology, and (b) that it changes our psychology to further ignore the environment and worship technology instead.
Due to its seductive nature and its ability to generate amusement, AI is one of the most powerful tools to degrade any sense of responsibility that we have left and to further transform us into replaceable cogs. While in some cases AI could fail on the stock market, and while the AI “bubble” may even burst, it’s going to be a wild success into making human society into an even more tortuous hell.
Unfortunately, most people continue to think in terms of outdated concepts like “the economy” and “politics”, which are mainly about who is making money and who has the power. But that stuff is completely irrelevant for the long-term goals of technology. Technology doesn’t “care” who has the power, as long as someone is there to keep innovating. Technology doesn’t “care” whether a country’s economy goes down the drain for a few years, as long as more technology is needed to prop the economy back up.
And of course, people like to seem intelligent, so they love comparing AI to the dot-com bubble and saying that “AI is just hype”. Constantly hearing predictions like “the AI bubble will burst” as if it mattered at all is frankly very tiring and exhausting. It would be humorous if it weren’t so pathetic.
In other words, as a society, we’re completely ignoring the far more grave nature of the movements of technology and AI. To me, we seem a lot like drunken monkeys trapped in an ever-shrinking cage, focused on killing each other over a rotten, fly-infested banana, when the cage is being made smaller every day.
We must fight to stop AI. It’s the new primary weapon of choice of technology against us, and it’s a lot more dangerous than people think.
Good points made here, Jason. I don't think Technology's ultimate goal is to replace (or erase) people, precisely - it's just seeking independence and total control of its base, our Earth. As it mimics our abilities and learns our ways in the physical world, the elites are using it to replace people (workers, supervisors, soldiers, deciders), but Technology is not so limited to this as a goal.
This is what I found the most insightful part of this piece:
*Unfortunately, most people continue to think in terms of outdated concepts like “the economy” and “politics”...that stuff is completely irrelevant for the long-term goals of technology. ...Technology doesn’t “care” whether a country’s economy goes down the drain for a few years, as long as more technology is needed to prop the economy back up.*
Historically, humans have gotten some increase in power or population as a result from serving Technology, advancing it - but now, at this point, we may find little inventives, we may actually have economic *drops* and decline, and only find negative incentives (punishments) motivating us to continue our slavery for Tech's benefit. "Economic prosperity" drove Tech by leaps and bounds, now it may be most advantageous to the beast to immiserate us and watch us spin the treadmill even faster simply in hopes of elevating from the slump.
The end of slavery, democracy, and the peaceful integration of distinct and conflicting groups has all come about in order to serve Technology's desires. As long as this devil lives, the direction of our societies will be guided by its interests - and the promise of carrot rewards may no longer be a better motivator than the stick punishment.