The Left & Right Have Abandoned Us to AI

The entire political spectrum in America seems to have thrown in the towel on saying anything useful about AI, let alone doing something on our behalf.

The Right has happily bought a bill of goods that goes something like this: A new technology promises to make businesses zillions, though it might destroy the planet in the process. Any attempts to affect or temper this development risks impeding it, so the only good government action is little to none.

As for the Apocalypse part? It’s like getting sold a high performance car that, if used “improperly,” could fly off the road. It’s just too exciting to pass up.

This also informs most if not all of the regulations that have been passed…it’s like sitting next to the driver as she careens down the road and suggesting that the problem isn’t speed but better cutting and weaving through traffic.

Further, if the true danger of AI is existential, it’s too big and complex for us to do anything about it. Money spent paying lip-service to “responsible” future development is just a cost of doing the real business of AI, which is to transform the world right now.

There’s just too much money to be made investing in the promise of AI to dare challenge it; in fact, when the media report on AI, it’s rarely to question the wisdom of its rampant adoption but rather the speed and profitability of that implementation.

The problem isn’t that we’re turning our world over to AI…it’s that it’s not happening fast enough.

The Left has obediently rolled over in the face of what appears to be a foregone conclusion: A new technology, presumably like those of the past, can and should be incorporated into our work and personal lives. We can pretend that AI augments human endeavor, so any efforts to resist or avoid it will constitute self-inflicted (and unnecessary) harm.

Unions? Let’s encourage our members to use AI, even pay to train them. Teachers need more AI in their classrooms. Kids need to be exposed to it as early as possible, so as to become more adept at relying on it. Hollywood creatives go on strike because AI is replacing them and cut a deal to merely slow that eventuality.

Religious institutions? The Catholic Church hosted a bunch of tech companies in Rome in 2020 when it called for “AI ethics,” and then Pope Francis asked the faithful to pray that AI and robots would always serve mankind and not the other way around.

Remember, the Church was bold enough to put Galileo on house arrest because he used tech to think something challenging, but when it comes to the actuality of a technology that’s transforming our lives and daring the once unassailable qualities of being human (consciousness, a soul)…

…crickets.

Though without a similar central authority, it looks like Islamic thought embraces using AI, such as a smart app that helps the faithful explore and apply the Quran in their lives. Ditto for Judaism, since the Creator created everything and therefore it’s up to us to figure out how to use it.

While religions literally partner with the Devil, there’s not a major university that doesn’t host some sort of center or conference dedicated to producing turgid studies and white papers about the complexities and nuance of AI adoption. They all yield the same conclusion:

AI is probably good and bad, though it definitely needs more study…and therefore continued funding, mostly from the companies developing the stuff.

With the Left and Right complicit in the AI takeover, the voices of concern are isolated and few.

There’s no concerted effort to challenge the effect that losing our jobs to AIs will have on the economy, not to mention our subsequent employment or sense of self worth.

There’s no debate about the profound implications for our conceptions of human-ness when compared to AIs that can already appear equally human, let alone those in the future that might actually possess AGI.

There’s no research on the effects of outsourcing our decision-making to machines that grow evermore intelligent and capable will have on our ability to function, whether individually or as a society.

There’s no discussion of the widening gap between right and poor that seems coded into the plans for AI adoption, as owners stand to rake in money by making users’ lives more efficiently predicable, controllable, and therefrom easier to monetize.

This leaves us abandoned, sitting in the backseat of that supercharged sports car, racing down the road at ungodly speed while the vehicle teaches itself how to levitate or do something otherwise new and unexpected.

And all we can do is hope it’ll do it “responsibly” and “ethically.”

Buckle up.