The Real Danger Of AI

(Is That It Is Run By Evil Warmongers) By Caitlin Johnstone | CaitlinJohnstone.com.au The most obvious and imminent threat right now is not that artificial intelligence will outsmart us and escape our control; it’s that it is being fully controlled by humans who are stupid and evil. The biggest AI threat isn’t artificial superintelligence wiping out humanity in a fit of mechanical vengeance like some digital Old Testament God; it’s the same oligarchs and empire managers as usual inflicting the same evils and abuses as usual upon their fellow man. We’re already presently watching the empire building AI into its killing machines and causing all kinds of horrifying problems while these technologies become more and more complex and unpredictable. CNN reports that US military AI “almost started a war” with China when it hallucinated intelligence showing a Chinese ship transporting nuclear weapon components to Iran; US military planes were apparently already in the air preparing to attack the vessel before human intelligence picked up on the error. A recent Pentagon report has officially concluded that an over-reliance on Palantir’s AI-powered command-and-control system Maven contributed to the bombing of a school in Minab which killed 120 children attending classes on the first day of the US-Israeli war with Iran. We learned early on in the Gaza holocaust that the IDF was using AI to help it bomb suspected Hamas members when they are at home with their families rather than when they are out in the battlefield using a program called “Where’s Daddy?”—a bit of Israeli humour about the fact that they would be killing the children of Palestinian resistance fighters when their fathers came home. We’re seeing politicians like Bernie Sanders voice concerns that “AI could soon be smarter than humans and function outside of our control,” but the most obvious and imminent threat right now is not that artificial intelligence will outsmart us and escape our control, it’s that it is being fully controlled by humans who are stupid and evil. Again, we know for a fact that powerful nuclear-armed military forces are knitting AI into all their systems. We’re watching them do it, right in front of our faces. An increasingly complex and confusing element has been added to an environment of already tense and dangerous military standoffs around the world as the US and its allies work to absorb the few remaining nations who have managed to retain sovereignty into the imperial power umbrella. And yet recent weeks have seen the mass media flooded with punditry speculating about possible scenarios under which AI might perhaps wind up leading to human extinction. We already know the most likely scenario under which AI will get us all killed. If it happens, it will be because rich and powerful sociopaths knit these technologies into war machinery that is designed for killing humans at mass scale. Duh. These developments are unfolding in the context of a frenetic new arms race with China in which nobody’s willing to tap the brake pedal for fear of falling behind. Any talk of regulation or slowing things down before they get out of control is dismissed because the competition-based systems which currently govern human behaviour have thrust us into a nightmare of constant military expansionism and brinkmanship instead of collaboration and harmony, all fuelled by the fact that this paradigm makes tech plutocrats and war profiteers obscenely wealthy. That’s clearly the most immediate existential threat that AI poses to our species right now. There’s also the only slightly less frightening threat of artificial intelligence enabling our rulers to use mass surveillance and autonomous weapons systems to stifle any revolutionary political movement before it gets off the ground, locking us into this freakish capitalist dystopia until the planet is an uninhabitable wasteland. In any case, this isn’t a new threat. It’s the same old threat with new toys. Capitalism must end, and the empire must fall. Our very existence depends on it. Originally published at caitlinjohnstone.com.