Artificial Intelligence (or not)
What's it all about, Alfie?
Everyone keeps talking about Artificial Intelligence these days. The future nightmare of Skynet, HAL or VIKI coming true. The Rise of the Machines. All that sort of thing. Computers which are conscious and aware. The logical ending whereby, to protect us from our own stupidity, The Brain has to enslave and/or destroy us.
So I’ve been giving it some thought. Something like The Terminator or Sonny would need some sort of internal energy source that didn’t need a power station and didn’t conk out. So a battery wouldn’t do and I’m not sure chest-sized nuclear things exist yet. A computer Brain would likewise need some sort of independent energy because otherwise humanity could simply unplug it when it got too bossy.
So we can probably relax about Skynet and The Terminator for a while.
Which leads us on to the idea that AI will take over the few jobs and careers the robots/Chinese have left us with. The idea that an AI dentist or AI lawyer will replace human ones - “Anything you can do, AI can do better, cheaper, faster”. Well, once again, I’m not so sure this will happen in the way people think it will. AI takes energy to work doesn’t it? Currently, massive amounts of energy and water but maybe, eventually, rather less. So we would need machines digging out coal to transport by machines to power stations run by machines to feed energy to machines to allow them to do thing on our behalf?
Why?
If we agree that everything costs money then where does this money to run all these clever machines come from? Well, governments tax the workers and spend the money raised. Are they going to tax the machines? Or the owners of the machines?
People say governments want AI so they can monitor their populations and the Tech Bros want AI so they can get data to monetise. Well, all this data AI acquires from people using the tech in its various forms is presumably bought and sold. It is used to track trends and behaviours which enable forecasting of what to sell, to invest in, to censor etc.
However, I think there will come a point where humans get bored being tracked and censored and monitored and will simply turn the tech off. Apparently, teenagers don’t “do Google”, they simply “TikTok” (odd new verbs eh?). Which presumaly doesn’t give Google any useful data. I look at X and the subscribers there all seem to be middle-aged Boomers. Apparently, only middle-aged Boomers use Facebook these days too. If governments want people to pay their taxes they will have to accommodate people who don’t “do computers” and they seem to be the elderly and the young (neither of whom appear to have any interest in learning how to pay their council tax online!).
The other thing that people don’t seem to comment on is this idea of a Universal Basic Income. Now, how does that work? Easy - the government pays everyone a basic amount to cover living frugally and, at some point, gets rid of cash and gives you Star Trek style digital credits which they control. “Just like in China”. Except, just like in 1984 and Brave New World, China appears to ignore the peasants who don’t even have phones, let alone Smart ones.
Now, assuming the governments go ahead with building AI superhus fuelled by erratic wind turbines and solar panels (just saving the world there) and these Brains take over the office jobs like the robots took over the car manufacturing jobs, what will the people do? How will they earn a living? Ah, I hear you say, the Universal Basic Income will provide.
Except, with nobody earning a living and nobody having the wherewithal to purchase anything the machines (and/or Chinese) make, how will the governments have the funds for the UBI? Ah, well, it won’t be “real” money will it - just digital credits, I hear you say. How does Bill Gates feel about that? Or Elon Musk? Or the King? Or the Duke of Westminster? If money as we know it disappears and we just have digital government credits then the King is no richer than the cleaner and Elon Musk isn’t the Richest Man in the World.
What do you think?
