“If You Want a Picture of the Future, Imagine a Bot Deleting a Human Face – for Ever”
As I’ve oft said, the two real US battles right now are:
Globalists v Nationalists
DC vs. US
Globalists being the borderless, stateless internationalists trying to fully subsume the US into the one world blob. The Nationalists to whom I refer being the last Americans trying to keep what’s left of the US a stand alone nation.
DC is the nation’s blob (full also of Globalists). Trying to subsume the US into itself (and the one world blob). The US to which I refer being the last non-DC Americans still fighting to keep any semblance of non-national-and-international autonomy.
As indicated, there is a LOT of overlap here.
Let’s today focus on the DC v US – with an inexorable side serving of Globalists v Nationalists.
Because Big DC is blob-ist and Globalist, it naturally attracts like-minded entities. The bigger the entities? The more likely they are to be simpatico with DC.
DC and the biggest of entities seek each other out for a harmonic convergence of like-minded efforts. We all know how that works.
DC has LOTS of power. Which it will happily sell. The big entities – Big Biz, Big Tech, foreign enemies, etc? Have LOTS of money. Which they will happily use to purchase power.
Of course, the Bigs already have power. What they’re doing is bribing into inertia – or even worse, cooperation? The one entity (government) big enough to prospectively stop them.
We know this business model works? Because a properly functioning government never would have allowed the Bigs to get anywhere near this big.
Which brings us to the existential threat that is Artificial Intelligence (AI). (I really don’t know of any other way to describe it.)
Which is of course being designed by Big Tech. By mostly horrible humans – who loathe humans.
Behold Peter Thiel. A guy who runs Palantir – a Big Tech company developing AI. (And in possession of HUGE government contracts – and just given a perpetual AI surveillance green light by DC’s Big Broke Bill.)
Thiel was recently asked about humanity. It didn’t go well:
Ross Douthat: “You would prefer the human race to endure, right?”
Thiel: “…..Uhhh….”
Douthat: “You’re hesitating.”
Thiel: “Uhhh…I don’t know….”
Watch the video. It’s even worse than the transcript.
Given that AI will inevitably (and right soon) surpass the capacities of man in…everything? And that it is being designed by anti-human humans like Thiel?
It is not a titanic leap to suggest that AI will inevitably (and right soon) decide we inferior humans are a net drain on the network. And delete us in the name of overall efficiency.
And in the non-apocalyptic meantime, most jobs humans do? Humans will no longer do. Because AI will.
25% of all US jobs – are driving jobs. So tens of millions of professional driving humans are all less than a decade from being out of their jobs.
Lawyers have dominated DC – and thus society – for MANY decades. AI is currently predicted to do 44% of all legal work. And that’s the floor. Because as AI improves, that percentage only grows.
Accountants? Architects? Electrical Engineers? Civil Engineers?…. It was nice knowing you humans….
The lie currently being promulgated – to paper over the devastation?
AI Won’t Replace Humans – But Humans With AI Will Replace Humans Without AI
Which is so dumb on its face as to be sardonically laughable. There is no business owner on Earth who will pay a human engineer six figures to sit idly by while AI develops a new network in a relative fraction of the idle human’s time.
DC spent the 20th Century selling out US blue collar workers. Now in the 21st Big Tech’s AI is coming for the white collar workers.
That’s not anti-human at all.
Are they all supposed to learn to code? Don’t bother – AI writes code too. And I’m sure AI writing the code to advance itself isn’t at all problematic.
Which brings us back to AI-designing Big Tech – and DC.
Again, government is the only entity left large enough to hope to even slow down Big Tech. And no government on the planet is bigger than DC’s.
Except DC is more owned and operated by Big Tech than even the perpetually flaccid European Union (EU).
Data is the coin of the digital realm. And has been ever since the Internet began being a thing. It’s your online persona. As in EVERYTHING you do online.
In the Analog World? Nike can’t even use Tiger Woods’ photograph without his permission.
But tech companies became Big Tech – the hugest companies in planetary history? By taking every aspect of our online likenesses – our online profiles? As in EVERYTHING we do online? And collecting it and cataloging it – to then sell it.
DC wrote the law that prohibits Nike from exploiting Tiger’s analog likeness.
But in 3+ decades of endless Internet expansion? DC has NEVER written a law limiting Big Tech’s exploitation of our digital likenesses. Even the flaccid EU has done so.
Which brings us back to AI. Does anyone have any realistic hope that a DC that STILL hasn’t written ANY law to limit Big Tech’s abuse of humans’ data? Is going to do ANYTHING to limit Big Tech’s AI abuse of humans?
I do not think such “hope” – realistic or any other kind – exists.
And of course: Even if DC acted responsibly? Communist China won’t. Just about no other international actor will.
And if by some miracle any of them might? Or pretend they might? Big Tech will see to it that they don’t. Just as they have in DC.
Which is why I say AI is an existential threat. I really don’t know of any other way to describe it.
Seton Motley is the president of Less Government, a DC-based non-profit organization dedicated to reducing the power of government and protecting the First Amendment from governmental assault.
