Artificial Intelligence: The Biggest Result People Miss
People ask what the effects of artificial intelligence will be. In most of the talk I come across, people tend to ask what AI will do for them. Will using it help them? Will others using it lead them to miss out?
Sometimes they wonder if it will help them directly, as opposed to helping them do their jobs. They wonder if it help them in their loneliness like a friend or therapist. Sometimes people wonder abstractions like if AI is conscious or can be. I haven’t written much about AI. Mostly this piece: I love developing resilience and strength: AI version, part 1.
People often wonder about the side effects. What if a terrorist started using it? What if it were used to make killer robots? What would Hitler do with AI?
Still, those concerns seem abstract or fear-mongering. They seem like risks we could work to protect ourselves from. Another similar risk is about the pollution and depletion they cause, though everyone seems to underestimate its potential harms. They also dream that “AI will solve climate change.” They think it has the potential to help with everything.
I see a simple big picture I haven’t seen anyone express. I see AI as a tool like sharp knives and fire. It augments the values of the people and culture implementing it. It accelerates culture. What results we as a culture achieve, it will achieve more of those things.
On sustainability, people who try to conserve, it will help. It will also help people who want to do things that pollute and deplete.
From the last paragraph, you might presume it won’t change our trajectory, just accelerate it, but there’s another effect. Like all tools, it will help people and groups in some proportion to the access people have to it.
Thus, it will move our culture toward values of Silicon Valley, finance, and regulators. In this pattern, it will continue trends happening for thousands of years: people who control resources will, through AI, gain control over more resources, which they’ll use to dominate and addict more people.
I think everyone is thinking of how it can help them, not realizing that however much it helps them, it helps people with rank and status more.
