There isn’t enough power in the developed world for deployment of these new technologies for even 50% of population, much less AI countries
REMARKS: H.E. Ambassador Professor Gilbert Morris at Bahamas Diplomtic Week Forum on AI and Development
The aim was to both to gain and to explain the actual state of affairs of the coming techno-centric human future:
It’s necessary to state hard facts that are beyond mere opinions or positive or negative perceptions:
1. Only 7% of world’s nations produce any AI tech. This means 93% have little to no say in AI architecture, design or deployment. Our definitions of “keeping pace with innovation” usually means someone else’s innovations!
2. In today’s world, that “someone else’s” will be increasingly a non-state actor: Google’s “Gemini” or Anthropic’s “Claude” - Facebook or NVIDA are all larger that 90% of the worlds nations in valuation terms and there is nothing small states can do to get them to alter their technologies for our benefit.
3. Of the 93% of nations left, about 1/3rd are role model states - Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, New Zealand etc - with exceptions like India, Singapore and Estonia. These states don’t manufacture enterprise technology, but they have the means to acquire and manufacture components of enterprise tech, which gives them leverage.
4. The rest are spilt in two; neither of which has leverage: first are mere consumers of tech, whose systems and infrastructure will change to conform to the tech they commune. Second is the abject “digital divide” where they they will have to make do with dregs and second-hand tech. They will - by current structures - live off the scraps.
5. The Promised Balance is Eroding: AI has had diagnostic breakthroughs in health and public-facing innovations in immigration and eGovernment in Singapore and Estonia, for instance. But the innovations are outpacing the very concept of the nation state, as technology is developing faster than societies, economic and legal systems can adapt.
6. Social Media now enhanced in impact and speed-of-spread by AI, is producing distortions of reality and neuro-cognitive atrophies; which has reached crisis levels amongst young people and crisis levels in schools and universities. More than 2 dozen nations have banned social media access for children at school or between 7pm and 7am; with China limiting social media to 2 hours per day for children.
7. At the heart of social tech is personal identity: Estonia solved this by declaring that a citizen is now the unity of one’s Biological and Virtual self; a unified identity. Estonia also made internet access a Human Right in their Constitution; additionally, Estonia held their last 8 General Elections online for 1.3 million people. In Estonia, AI does not replace people but is structured and used to enhance human life and social systems.
URGENT PRIORITIES:
1. We need humane technologies that prioritises humans and enhances human living systems rather than render humans useless. Some sociologists argue that we are too divided for to generate the needed solutions. But I find that people are not divided: “they are being divided” for the benefit of a few tech companies.
2. Social mapping, Economic Mapping, Health and Payments tech, Plurality Systems aimed at enhancing political participation are the best uses for AI and enterprise technologies.
3. The problem - AGAIN - is, small nations in the 93% don’t create this tech and it’s being designed by those creating it for human control rather than human enhancement.
4. Small nations must urgently align and cooperate to ensure tech deployment at a pace of social absorption, without the ill-effects of limbic-colonialism or dopamine lust!
5. Small nations must convene a global congress aimed at setting new rules that will change our economic models across the world more in the next 3 years than the last 1,300 years.
6. But there are additionally two main crucial matters:
a. Even if managed well, AI will induce massive labour destabilisation. It’s not enough to say it will create jobs because AI companies will create AI to take those jobs too. Some advise a switch to Universal Basic Income (IBI). But UBI can’t be universal: manufacturing nations would have no UBI whilst non-manufacturing nations would have it, so as to create a market for transactions. This needs to be mapped out immediately.
b. There isn’t enough power in the developed world for deployment of these new technologies for even 50% of population, much less al countries. Energy is the impediment that will drive the geopolitics behind enterprise tech and AI dominance.
