The AI Utopia or why Che would join the AI revolution
They’re talking about things of which they don’t have the slightest understanding, anyway. It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves
Franz Kafka, The Trial
When it comes to social distortion, hopelessness and irrationality, Kafka has a lot to say. It takes a sense of absurdity, a deep understanding (or misunderstanding, as according to Kafka “The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other”) and a close observation of human history to express fear of authority.
I would classify fear of authority under the general fear of the unknown, in particular lack of understanding that comes from over-complexity. Βureaucracy, distant centralised control and indirect, representative participation in the commons are characteristics of our contemporary society that make it feel more impersonal, less comprehensible and thus, dangerous. Danger comes from the system’s ability to affect us and ultimately punish us, a remark that combined with our inability to understand the rationality of the system, makes us suspicious, hesitant and prejudiced against unfamiliar situations.
Artificial intelligence has rapidly entered our everyday life. The recent advancements however, being mostly manifested as impressive applications and not deeper theoretical understanding, seem to create more questions than the answers they provide. In front of these discoveries, one cannot anticipate that AI will leave our society unchanged. One would also have a hard time arguing that society is ready and mature enough to handle AI. Nevertheless, discuss, we can and must, on what our stand will be. Is AI a threat or an opportunity? Is it a mistake or a natural development? Will this uncertainty degenerate the questions to an argument on how the system will react and thus, render us mere spectators of a complicated and deterministic system? Or could this development reveal aspects of our society that will urge it to get out of its comfort zone? Finally, when in our history did society enjoy a long period in the comfort zone?
As I am not aiming at an exhaustive discussion of the subject, I will comment on 3 common-recurring patterns in AI discussion. Note that this is just a generally optimistic person sharing her thoughts and trying to initiate a conversation. AI has righteously gained strong opponents and supporters, but I’m too sceptical to join a side yet.
Plot 1: An authoritarian government or company takes control of AI.
If there is a recurring pattern in post-apocalyptic, science fiction plots, that is the rise and dominance of a ruler with enormous power, be it in the form of an authoritarian government (1984, Orwell) or a colossal company (Do Androids dream of electric sheep, Philip K. Dick). One does not need Sherlock’s deductive skills to suspect that our system supports the accumulation of power and wealth to big organisations. It is thus not risky to anticipate that, in the future, we will deal with a central and omnipotent regulator. Although the negative consequences of this scenario need no further discussion, one can question its likelihood.
Central control was employed out of necessity in our attempt to organise ourselves in ever-increasing groups. Monitoring of society is a difficult task, that requires abstracting away individuality, balancing differences and acknowledging tendencies rather than personalities. One could say our democracy does not scale well with its members. Technology has, however, equipped us with tools, such as the internet, to form bottom-up structures that manage to self-organise despite the lack of a central authority. In connection to that, artificial intelligence is also at its strongest in distributed scenarios. It has been observed that employing remote and distributed solutions, such as the internet of things and cloud storage, can lead to a decrease in its cost and increase in its security. This approach can make data untraceable, and thus human activity unmonitorable. This can have unpredictable consequences, as the Bitcoin phenomenon we are currently experiencing. Nevertheless, it proves that a central authority does not naturally arise but can artificially emerge as a necessity of a system failing to exploit its self-sufficiency.
Plot 2: Robots steal our jobs.
This is probably the most practical concern, as it seems to directly threaten our survival. We will assume that, regardless of how creative and special you may be, the AI is advanced enough to do your job at least equally well. In this case it is natural to conclude that you become unemployed. Thus, concerns about financial survival, social prestige and slavery to robots arise. But is this individualistic point of view the correct way to approach this? Can the totality of humanity, even gradually, become unemployed? How viable would such a system be?
Let’s now suppose that this plot is true. Stripping it from its conventional connotations and questioning the established role of work in our society, how catastrophic would such a scenario be? In simpler terms, how sad would you be for losing your job?
Although a job is a straight-forward term, there are different ways to view it. A means to make a living, for sure. A way to contribute to society; probably but not the only one. Your purpose of life; highly questionable. On a personal level working contributes to your survival and makes you feel useful. From a social point of view, jobs are a way to distribute tasks in order to ensure the survival and improvement of the society. Does this, however, justify the fact that an average person spends one third of his adult life working? Furthermore, are jobs obtained according to the satisfaction they offer to the individual or the society? If jobs are what fuels society with products that satisfy its needs, how detrimental would it be to assign them to non-humans? Is there an one-to-one correspondence between you feeling useful and you working? Creativity and progress have usually been manifested outside of the scope of stress of survival. The ancient Greeks observed and proved by demonstration that philosophy, art and science are more successfully pursued in a state of financial independence (and slavery for some).
Plot 3: Humanity is sunk in an age of spiritual darkness.
Automation kills creativity, right? Assign a task to a machine and you have condemned it to eternal, sterilised, sterile perfection. This will make creativity obsolete, as it is a product of experimentation, doubt of traditional processes and change. Thus, an automated world, operated by machines, would deprive humanity of its artistic, creative side, leading to a Middle ages-resembling era of stagnation and authority.
But is automation the sole purpose of AI? A brief research on state of the art developments (AI playing games, AI making music, AI trying to be creative) will indicate otherwise. AI is no longer concerned only with automating trivial, boring tasks. Humans are exploring the processes that describe decision-making, strategy-formation, memory, consciousness. These subjects have long been discussed on philosophical and neuroscientific grounds, but what if AI manages to give an answer to these in the language of mathematics? (Although we have to acknowledge the danger of the answer being 42.)
But what does Che have to do with all these?
Although Che would probably not get along with a machine other than his motorcycle, he can be drugged into our discussion as a symbol. That is, a symbol of fearlessness of change, social reformation, love of discovery, carelessness in favour of progress, passion for life. A symbol of revolution, which, regardless if you chose it to happen or not, you are going to be a part of.
By this point it should be clear that this article in not intended to make concerns about AI sound unrealistic and exaggerated. It’s not intended to promote (robotic) communism either or claim that there exists a robotic Utopia. Its sole purpose is to remind us that we have to keep an open, alternative mind to changes, otherwise we are risking of living a life of self-fulling prophecies (and how boring would that be?).
