Big AI Could Fulfill Marx’s Visions
Big AI needs regulation otherwise the “oligarchs” might “keep the workers poor”.
In their article for the New York Times, MIT professors and authors of “Power and Progress: Our 1,000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity” Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson delve into the world of AI-associated concerns.
They note that modern companies are trying to outpace each other. And this calls for appropriate safeguards as AI may do “great harm to jobs, privacy, and cybersecurity. Arms races without restrictions generally do not end well.”
Discussing the use of information in the history of humankind, they note that in Mesopotamia and medieval Europe, the elites as well as the clergy and nobility were the ones writing scribes and books and thus using this advantage to reinforce their social power.
They then touch upon the industrialization period and the growing literacy over the years and the internet that “offered even lower-cost ways to express opinions.”
“But over time the channels of communication concentrated into a few hands including Facebook, whose algorithm exacerbated political polarization and in some well-documented cases also fanned the flames of ethnic hatred. In authoritarian regimes, such as China, the same technologies have turned into tools of totalitarian control,” they write, adding that the rise of AI will only worsen the problem.
This is because people, the authors argue, choose not to assess an array of sources. Instead, they think that the nascent technology provides singular and definitive answers. Accordingly, AI could potentially usher in a doom-and-gloom scenario by Karl Marx of oligarchs keeping the workers poor.
Even more so since AI requires hefty investments that only super successful companies can afford. Such as Microsoft and Alphabet.
To avoid potential ramifications, the authors say American Congress must assert individual ownership rights over underlying data that is relied on to build A.I. systems.
“If Big A.I. wants to use our data, we want something in return to address problems that communities define and to raise the true productivity of workers. Rather than machine intelligence, what we need is “machine usefulness,” which emphasizes the ability of computers to augment human capabilities,” they say, arguing that it would empower workers and reinforce human decision-making in the production process.
Previously, Gagarin News reported about exploring the potential of blockchain in AI.
