The Good, Bad and Ugly Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Social Media on Humanity

 

The Expanding Influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Social Media on Human Life and Culture

By Professor Gilbert Morris
Nassau, N.P., The Bahamas

LET’S STOP UNINFORMED NONSENSE; SOCIAL MEDIA AND AI ARE A THREAT TO HUMAN EXISTENCE!

How do sane people read this and compare it to the printing press or people’s fear of technologies?

That is mere duffus barking!  This is different.  It was possible to get away from those technologies.

No one became addicted to their wrench, sewing machine or their refrigerator or their lawnmower.  These technologies did not have the capacity to give some unknown person or system access to one’s life and nor have they capacities to manipulate one’s opinion on nearly every aspect of life.  The scale of the impact of the automobile, the telephone and the airplane was they they did not replace everyday repetitive or creative tasks; with the capacity to retain personal data.

Social media and Artificial intelligence are different in every respect and represent both opportunities to build a good society - as my colleagues Daniel Schmachtenberger, Tristan Harris and Audrey Tang are trying to do - and yet because of the power relations of our social, political and economic models, they pose a virulent existential risk; if only because we are stupid enough to misread the doltish pleasures it gives us - for now - whilst ignoring what it’s done already, what it’s doing and will do.

Social media was not designed by techies - who are often brainless about psychology and sociology - it was designed by cognitive neuroscientists and game theorists on the psychology of girls 13-27. (This is not new as sociologist Thorstein Veblen, Max Weber and Edward Bernays built the social and legal models for the Industrial Revolution).

Now at one end: it’s Peter Theil, Mark Andreessen and Curtis Yarin and at another Nick Bostrom, Josha Bach and the social media and AI Leviathans.

Why did they premise the psychology of girls and young women?  Because that demographic is the most powerful, most attractive, most consistent seekers of attention in human history.  Anything pitched to that demographic sells.

Mothers dote on them, fathers adore them…all men - even wicked ones - want them and they become promiscuous attention seekers almost naturally.

Get them to adopt a trend and it becomes a fad that is monetisable.

In the attention economy, they all get to act like celebrities talking bogus nonsense about “boundaries” and “my followers”, 80% of whom are BOTS!

At universities, we are seeing psychological derangements and dissonances…a child at 18 gets 25,000 followers for nothing; no talent, not gifts, no accomplishments.  She naturally thinks it’s her essence, when she has none!

One or two such “influencers” get “brand deals”, and lots more get meaningless package giveaways…and material greed merges with dopamine rushes to entice and enthuse these female youth into an obsession with social media, now powered by AI…not merely to engage…but to capture their psychologies and render than automatons for the social media companies.

This heralds two things in general:

1. For girls, every day there is another 10 million 18 years olds who awaken and are prepared to get naked in social media, so at least for a time, gaining popularity over the previous 18 year olds.  Moreover, social media is one massive dating site in which 80% of the women - convinced that they are 10 (tens) - their term, not mine - prefer only 3% of men, who want none of them, except for “hookups”; this generating unfulfillable expectations, leading to anxieties.

Additionally, take ONLYFANS.  Of the 10 million 18-25 year olds in America, over 1 million are on OnlyFans; so 10% of marriageable aged women, with 80% of the audience as white married males.

That means those marriages are suspect and also means, amongst many things a range of society that’s raising the next two generations of children are engaged in an anti-social building practice: Lawnmowers can’t do that.

These predilections have initiated new human protocols: young women awaken in the morning and go directly to social media and start speaking as if they are speaking to best friends or actual fans.  They engage with comments as if these BOTS/Followers actually care for them.

Imagine you live in a home with someone obsessed with and by social media: you do everything to make your home loving and peaceful.  But that person engaged with some unknown and probably unreal person OUTSIDE YOUR LIVES, brings the tensions and disagreements with that person or thing into your private life!  Think upon that: you private life is constantly subject to the nothingness of some unknown aliens interloper with the power to change the mood of our loved one…and alter the mood and focus of your home.

I believe in deep listening to those about whom we care, but don’t think I could bear listening to the digital rubbish from some social media ghetto and not think the person trying to explain it to me has lost their cotton picking mind!

Worse,when the fake digital crowd leaves the obsessed for the next batch of 18 year olds…they crash psychologically…and depending on what they’ve done online, they may recover only in their mid-30s, now having emptied their youth for nothing without learning, practising or developing proper social skills.

2. For young men, because social media actively promotes a false sense of value for women, young men are bereft of meaningful female interaction, or they face imperious arrogance fuelled by social media delusions.  Now that’s changing?  Why? Because - whilst many of their fathers are on onlyfans - AI is building sexual companions - both online and as robots - and these young men are adopting these fake relations and preferable because they satisfy a single urge in an unlimited manner.

In one episode, a company made a sex robot with docile and “grape” settings.  The latter was preferred.  This makes for a society where young men from 16-27 may learn their basic sexual interaction for interactive porn and robots…which makes for a dangerous world for actual women.

All these modes are fed and feed from clinically tested additive processes deliberately manipulated by social media companies, in addition to colonialising private data, to a point that will make democracy and the nation-state impossibilities.

These are not - by any measure - and not by orders of magnitude anything like ANYTHING we’ve ever known.  Beyond these personal psychological corruptions is broad structural catastrophe that is underway already.

For those who say, but AI would generate new jobs - part of the daft unthinking galloping nonsense oft repeated - think sensibly, a job is a value or earning proposition: if humans make new jobs after AI takes their job…AI would just take the new jobs too, since that maximises income.

Why would AI companies allow humans to earn money when they could and AI could make new AI to take any new job ‘ad infinitum’!

Let’s stop talking nonsense and recognise existential threats to our civilisational models. 

Finally, social media has been successful in dividing humans through psychological manipulation and the undermining of facts.  Keyboard Idiot barkers argue with research professors and think themselves informed by google searches and confirmation biases; which they can’t grasp even when explained.

Yes, we all know social media allows one to connect with cousins, old school friends and to see whether one’s high school love has gotten old and fat.  Meanwhile AI has made stupendous medical advances.  But actual knowledge teaches us the gradient logic of the “double edged” sword: just the energy demand and AI business model will mean:

1. It undermines the labour/wage economic models

2. Even as its makes medical and educational advances

3. Therefore, if you’re jobless, you get nothing from those advances

4. Those advances are distributed to a new super elite class, as the wealth gap widens and political systems become more useless than they are now.

It’s astonishing how people convince themselves that society will suddenly do a good it’s never done, because technology has the capacity for that good.

LISTEN: nearly 90% of AI will aim at building surveillance, control, and weapons.

Why?

Because those generate power…and power grants dominant status…and despite the Old and New Testament and all the loving talk and wisdom books of history…..power and dominant status - I tell you - have been the only sustained ambitions of humankind! 

Governments should have begun 5 years ago to take emergency measures through high level technical task forces: social media and AI impacts are not collateral to national well being…they are central.  The world is being divided…and countries that lack control over their digital architecture, social media, AI deployment, systems construction and maintenance will become digitally colonised.

There is zero option now for partnering with tech giants….since they are already richer than 80% of the world’s nations.  Countries like China, Estonia, India, Singapore and Norway are the last best hope to gain a ready-made solution that does not compromise national security completely.

A hint to the wise!

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The Benefits and Pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence - AI

The Best Star-Wars Scenario for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Revolution

AI and the Importance of Regulation from a Star-Wars Perspective

By Carlos Scartascini

While the uses and capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) continue to grow at a fast pace, the head-long rush into new frontiers could have significant drawbacks.  As Anton Korinek, an AI expert at the University of Virginia, described in a recent blog, AI systems could soon replace relatively unskilled cognitive workers, like people who work in call centers or low-level accountants.  More disruptively, such systems could eventually learn to do more complex tasks, take over robotics and manufacturing, and displace manual laborers and highly skilled cognitive workers, causing wages to crash and inequality and hardship to deepen.

Such a dystopia would not be far from some of the scenarios depicted in Star Wars, that futuristic saga of events in a galaxy far, far away, where worlds of oppression and injustice co-exist with others aiming for a more perfect order.  And as Korinek indicates, a more perfect order is possible.  Indeed, the extent to which AI disrupts the labor market and how much it affects people, may well depend on the degree of regulation governments establish.  Consider as analogies, three different cases from the Star Wars universe.

Anarchic State: The Outer Rim Territories

In the Star Wars galaxy, the Outer Rim Territories often represent a rugged, lawless or less regulated area where the central government’s influence is weak and predators roam.  This can be likened to countries that don’t regulate AI, leading to a kind of anarchy where innovation is unbridled and the risks associated with unchecked AI development abound.  A lack of regulation can spur rapid technological advances.  But it can also lead to ethical dilemmas, misuses of technology, and harm to society, as happens in planets like Tatooine, which is controlled by wealthy and powerful crime lords, but where most inhabitants, including small-town residents and farmers, live in poverty or just scrape by.  Such an imbalance creates a stark contrast between the powerful few and the impoverished majority.  Unfortunately, many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean may end up in a similar equilibrium.  AI in such a scenario would grow, as would productivity and wealth.  But its fruits would benefit only those with access to the means of production, rather than the populace as a whole.

Authoritarian Regulation: The Galactic Empire

The Galactic Empire represents a highly centralized and authoritarian regime where control is exercised over many aspects of life, including technology and scientific advancement.  In this analogy, the Empire’s approach to regulation might create rents — privileges granted by the government in response to lobbying or other manipulation — in the same way that poorly implemented AI regulations could favor certain industries or companies.  This can stifle innovation in other sectors.  It can concentrate power and wealth, leading to inequality and potential abuses of power, akin to how the Empire benefits a select few while suppressing the majority.  Some countries in our region will try to prevent the negative effects of AI.  They will regulate what can and can’t be done with it.  For example, AI may be used to check legal documents, but a lawyer may still need to sign off.  It could be used to diagnose patients, but a doctor would still need to sign the prescriptions.  In other words, to preserve certain jobs, many tasks that could be done independently and unburdened by bureaucracy may still have to pass through physical hands.  Some people will benefit from these rents created by the government.  But those not so lucky to be part of a guild or pressure group may lack access both to the benefits of AI and the government-protected rents.

Balanced Regulation: The Galactic Republic

Before its fall, the Galactic Republic was a democratic union that governed a large portion of the galaxy.  It represents a more balanced and fair approach, striving to benefit all.  This would be akin to well-thought-out policies and regulations that aim to tax excess profits and ensure that the benefits of AI advancements are broadly shared across society.  Such regulation would ideally mitigate risks.  It would promote innovation and fairness, ensuring that AI serves the public good and doesn’t lead to significant societal disparities.  Governments would let AI flourish and achieve its massive potential for increasing prosperity and wealth.  But they would also find ways to redistribute the benefits in ways that maximize welfare.

Choosing the Best Star-Wars Scenario for the AI Revolution

Government decisions will be crucial in determining which of these scenarios characterize countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Anarchy and the Empire are not difficult to achieve.  Governments in the region, which have traditionally been known for introducing bad and distorting regulation could easily facilitate one of those two realities.  Becoming the Galactic Republic is much harder.  To reach that more enlightened state, governments have to invest resources to understand the benefits and pitfalls of AI, generate the conditions for its development, and control its excesses.  They also have to develop a strong social safety net, improve the way they levy taxes — when, where and on what — and make significant investments in public goods and infrastructure. Individuals, in the meantime, will have to find alternative ways of working so they can flourish individually and as a group.  Investing in government capabilities to deal with the new realities created by AI is long overdue.  Unfortunately, many governments may be too passive, delaying till it’s too late.  At that stage, there may be only two choices: that of the anarchic state or the state that benefits only the powerful few.

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