If you want to make the problem worse, we should implement your ideas.
I can’t think of a more backwards way to approach at this issue than the article above. It’s frankly like reading a Noam Chomsky article, great at identifying problems, horrible at identifying causes and solutions due to a strong bias.
I’ll start with the following premise: You think government is the way to fix problems. Here is another way to look at it: Government is the root cause of every problem you mentioned.
I’m not going to tear apart the article paragraph by paragraph, that would be boring and pedantic. However I will direct your attention to a few examples:
In the US, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, and Apple (the “G-MAFIA”) are hamstrung by the relentless short-term demands of a capitalistic market where government oversight is nearly impossible on a rising group of tech companies that could dominate how the 21st century plays out with the advent of artificial intelligence and a machine-learning world of everything
How did these companies gain their dominance? Was it a free market? Can you honestly say that these companies were not funded by a forced collective? Sure Google gets billions from advertising profits, but they also get billions from the CIA, the NSA not only to this day, but from the very beginning. Same with military contracts for Microsoft products. IBM’s close relationship to taxpayer funding is an extremely long history, as well as Facebook. Without help to start, and continued help by direct taxpayer funding, these companies would have no where near the power they have right now. I would suggest that there would be a far wider variety of products and companies, all smaller, on the market.
If we don’t change this trajectory of our inability to regulate algorithms, how will we maintain the sanctity or fairness of institutions like democracy or the rights of the middle class in capitalism in the future, when AI becomes more powerful, more ubiquitous and a sharper weapon for bad actors?
Regulation hurts the middle class. Certification helps the middle class. You have this exactly backwards. There is a nice long history of big companies getting involved in the regulation process so that only the big companies can pass the regulation. It forms the very monopolies you say you want to break. We see this in the car industry, the medical industry, the chemical industry, and the education industry. Every single industry that has ever stronger regulation has bigger monopolies. Why are you promoting more of this?
Meanwhile less regulation provides wider selection and lower prices. If you want to help the middle class like you claim, you want less regulation and more certification. labels and iconography that easily lets people understand what they are buying. “Organic” is a great example of certification, while U.S.D.A approved is an example of regulation. Last time I checked, USDA hasn’t stopped E Coli outbreaks or feces from entering meat products.
There’s no going back. Rather than create a grand strategy for AI or for our long-term futures, the federal government has stripped funding from science and tech research, thrown away the keys into the hands of greedy corporations whose own employees cannot even hold them accountable. See Microsoft, see Google, see Facebook.
Here, you , yourself are admitting that the government is causing the problem, and I agree. By making both financial risk and liability risk public and privatizing profits, you have the exact situation that you are describing. But instead of allowing smaller, more nimble and better companies to make it into the arena to strip power from these competitors….you want MORE govenrment. What the heck?
There isn’t a difference between “more, better regulation” and “more government” that is exactly the same thing and it empowers the very people you are trying to disempower. How do I know? Congress doesn’t, and has never, listened to the middle class unless it meets the goals of the upper class. I’m dead serious. It’s a fact, and it has been true for at least decades (I think centuries)
Why is democracy so great anyway?
Democracy is a 2500 year old idea that pits two lions against a lamb to decide what is for dinner. We are having the exact same ideological battles about democracy that Plato and Aristotle had. Exactly the same with regard to the chosen incarnation of democracy (mob vs representative). The founding fathers definitely did one better by creating a written constitution. But it’s just a piece of paper that has been interpreted, reinterpreted and now misinterpreted from a document that used to decribe the powers that citizens have over the government into a document that supposedly describes government power over the people.
Instead of looking at the advances of technology from a Luddite point of view (I mean this specifically not in a derogatory manner), why not question the power structure that is actually the cause of your fear. THe luddites used to break stuff, and the monarchs who were deciding whether or not to allow people to use a steam engine, or a printing press tried to stop the technology from escaping.
There is no point. Once the technology is free, it is free. Period. Why do you think we are worried about terrorists getting nukes? It’s because they can (and probably will. So, should we keep acting in a way that causes terrorists?). There is no scenario in which laws in the US will make it 100% sure that they will not get this technology. It’s only been a few decades. Since this tech got free, the only thing keeping it out is really expense.
AI, GM babies and animals, blockchain, quantum computers, and so forth are all technologies we are releasing now. Your idea of regulation means future Facebooks, Googles and IBMs will be the only ones with these technologies (they already are in fact).
Why are you promoting the very methods by which this scenario is created?
Instead, a market of certification products. There is no law saying to go scuba diving you need a certification. It’s a liability issue. If I were hiring scuba divers, I’d prefer NAUI certs over PADI certs.
What is the alternative?
Self soveriegnity and a mechanism to deal with liability. If I do not want a War on drugs, a wall, 1 million prisoners, wars in 8 countries that never harmed us, massive surveillance only available to a select few, etc etc etc, why do I have to pay for those things? If tens of millions of us don’t want those things, why do we have to pay for them?
Why do I have to have a financial proctologial exam every year, paying people who only have a job because it’s a law to have this exam? Further, I don’t pay them to help me keep the cancer away, I pay them to help keep the cancer.
If I do not want to pay to maintain the monopolies of Google, Monsanto, Raytheon etc etc, why am I forced to? It’s because of your cherished Democracy. And I know you think “democracy is broken” or some such thing, I am telling you that this is working perfectly. You simply do not get to create positions of power and then think you have power over it. In the history of mankind, this has never been the case.
Instead, if you don’t want ot pay for Monsanto products, then don’t pay for Monsanto products. If Equifax (talk about a government created cartel!) hurts you by giving out you information, you should be able to group up and demand payment for the harm. Here is a video of one way it might work.
How do we get there from here?
Well, to start, strong voices like yours could stop crying out for more government control. Instead, think of the harder solution: How do we accomplish what we want without pointing guns at them (yes, the government solution, in the end, means pointing guns at people to make them comply, this is not a controversial position).
Then we can obviate swaths of government control by providing alternative solutions such as local farms over Big Ag. Another one is shared private surveillance made public over publicly funded secret surveillance. Huge improvements to society could be made through blockchain solutions for everything from credit reporting, to loans, to basic income, to sovereignity, to identity, to stores of value and plain old easy to use currency that brings you into the economy instead of extracting what it can out of you.
AI is going to be a part of this. It’s a technology, and like all technology if its useful, people will use it. If it’s not, people will reject it (hello google goggles).
