What AI does for you it will do more and better for people richer than you
People are asking a lot: will artificial intelligence help or hurt us more.
In nearly every answer I hear, the person starts thinking of ways they can use AI to help them achieve their goals. They sometimes temper the desirable results they come up with concerns that it may take away jobs.
But the biggest problems in the world aren’t lack of jobs. The biggest problems are caused by humans—things like tyranny, fascism, dominance hierarchies, doof, addiction, and things some humans inflict on others. The humans causing those problems aren’t likely thinking, “How can I make people’s lives worse?” They’re more likely acting on values they consider good, right, and natural.
Being at the top of a dominance hierarchy means they can control necessary resources with no alternative. Artificial intelligence requires several resources they have more access to, like energy, currently mostly supplied by fossil fuels with negligible likelihood of weaning itself.
The Main Result
The main result of this situation: people with status have greater access to artificial intelligence, which they will use for reasons that feel good, right, and natural to them, which will mean they’ll augment and accelerate the problems they’re creating, thinking they help the people they hurt.
Technology augments the values of the people and culture using it. In a dominance hierarchy such as our culture, people who can control access to necessary resources can control a culture.
I am pro-technology. I am even more pro-democracy and pro-liberty, which means that I support government protecting the life, liberty, and property of innocent people who don’t or can’t consent to someone else taking or destroying it.
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