Humanity’s last 300 years have seen its share of paradigm shifts: the power of steam mechanics, electric power, the assembly line, robotic automation, computers, the net. They all upended the status quo.
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Moreover, even early in each transformation, everyone understood the world would never be the same. Jobs disappeared, but all to free up “human power,” stuff only people could do. It never went smoothly, always requiring good government.
Now, the AI revolution is upon us — and it promises a permanent paradigm shift like none before. But what of governing?
None?
None. Unlike all previous economic accelerations, there will be no “retraining” to free workers up for “human power.” AI exists to colonize humanity’s last frontier: it is supposed to think through problems, come up with solutions, and do it better than the best of us. It may be the last whole makeover. And the one no one asked for.
If there was ever a time for strong presidential leadership, strong government leadership, the most powerful American “soft power” extending across the globe, it is now, before the Mad Max years, before society breaks down.
Challenge yourself. Note Donald Trump and the people surrounding him in the White House. It is nearly impossible to conceive of a more dangerous group in power over the next two years. If you wondered why billionaires ran to the inauguration, you got your answer early, when he deregulated the entire industry, throwing himself into their pockets. Even if the corruption didn’t get him, the changes coming require mature thought, an understanding of history, and a big heart.
Because while our economy expands beyond measure, the exploding new efficiencies will dry up jobs lightning fast compared to the speed of change in all previous revolutions. We could see an economy growing at rates never contemplated, all with unemployment at 35%.
Moreover, something in AI development happened in the last month, maybe last week, and it’s evidently scared people deep inside the industry, scared them into a willingness to self-regulate by slowing themselves down. On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote an article stating that the intelligence industry should slow its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up.
Even more haunting, this letter came only two days after Jacob Coxon, one of Anthropic’s top technical researchers who worked on pre-training frontier models, resigned, saying that AI companies were “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” Both Elon Musk and Sam Altman announced their support of Amodei’s letter.
The letter also came two days after former President Barack Obama gave a speech imploring Democrats to make AI safety the center of their agenda over the next two years. On Sunday, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, (D-NY) said the House should take “decisive action” in regulating AI.
We cannot know with certainty, but only an idiot wouldn’t assume that something terrifying happened in their labs very recently. AI’s meta dangers haven’t snuck up on anyone.
And rather than have a president who sees the writing on the wall — the resignation, the letter, the industry support — and calls every industry executive in to meet at the White House with top members of Congress, so everyone hears what the hell happened, ready to leap to new legislation this week and meetings with world leaders, we have one in Ireland enjoying a golf tournament on his course.
Rather than a Congress rushing to schedule meetings early this week, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson finds himself less worried about the problem. Johnson says, “We’re not going to rush in and pass a piece of legislation that would do harm to the country and put China at an edge. And so we’ve got to do this carefully.”
Right now, it appears that the thing most likely to do harm to our country is “our” AI.
The dangers are immediate. Anthony Aguirre, president and CEO of the Future of Life Institute, who called for a six-month pause for the industry’s development in 2023, says:
“They’ve kind of realized, their employees have realized, everyone has realized that they’re building Skynet… It’s pretty much become clear to the world and even the AI companies that they’re not really prepared to control the AI systems they’re racing to create.”
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“Skynet,” of course, is the system in the Terminator movies, the one that gained sentience. It worried humanity was about to shut it off, and started a nuclear war. Aguirre noted that no matter who builds Skynet first, if it gets here, we all lose.
What are they really afraid of? Amodei warns that within six to 12 months, AI could be capable of leading a swarm of agents that could take over the entire internet.
Given the suddenness of the resignation — the letter, Musk, Altman, Obama, all in the last few days — one fears that the industry knows that AI is already capable of shutting down the net. Losing the net wouldn’t kill us off, but losing it overnight would. Your food, medicines, and electricity won’t find their way to your home if the net is just “unavailable” for a month or nine. Society breaks down very, very quickly without basics.
The United States spends over $1.5 trillion dollars a year “defending itself” by building things that blow up. If the AI companies have technology that may escape our control and effectively blow us up from the inside, no boom, and no amount of money, nor time, can or should be spared in defending ourselves from that threat.
It is probably worth mentioning that Iran has computers, too, and it doesn’t require an “accident” for these AI agents to get out of hand and shut it all down.
Donald Trump sounds like he doesn’t have a worry in the world as he enjoys his time in Ireland: “Look, we’re leading China in AI … “
(Maybe that’s the problem. But go on.)
“We can put guardrails, we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up. And they’re bringing up things that won’t happen. But whoever wins with AI, wins.”
Except it is the executives themselves that are the negative forces and are telling us that right now AI is winning AI, and, as we’ve already heard, if it wins, we all lose.
Which brings us right back around to having the single worst person and administration overseeing these fast-moving developments. It is quite a thing when the people who stand to make the most money, be the “biggest winners,” are the ones screaming that we need to slow down. Our golfing president’s reptilian brain doesn’t process that kind of nuance.
If China is a problem, get China to stop also; exchange experts to sit in various programming labs around the world as a check. If it can be done with nukes, it can be done with AI. Cute thought.
Of course, nothing needs to even really go catastrophically wrong with AI for its development to be catastrophic to the last small chunk of “middle-class” Americans. We need to talk about Universal Basic Income because fortunes will be made like never before with an economy that efficient. With 40% unemployment, with AI taking over everything from McDonald’s, engineering, law, and much of medicine, and all driving, it’s too possible.
All of which is why we need the best leadership right now. One yearns for the sobriety and seriousness of the Obama administration, even his willingness to reach across the aisle. Something needs to be done, and if one has any sort of intuition, it sounds like it needs to be done immediately.
This revolution isn’t like the other ones, and society has gone technologically backward before — they were called the Dark Ages and lasted 300 years. And they only had mindless bacteria after them.
Jason Miciak is a Raw Story Columnist, author, political advisor, attorney, and single parent girldad. Please follow on Bluesky. He can be reached at [email protected]
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