How AI Could Destroy the Modern World Even If It Works
Like a lot of people, I have mixed feelings about Artificial Intelligence. I believe ChatGPT and Grok are amazing learning tools that have helped increase my understanding of myself and the world. I love the AI graphics programs out there. When Elon releases his AI-driven robots, I look forward to buying one to do things around the house. I’ve also already ridden in a driverless Waymo Taxi…
…and gotten a massage from robotic arms (it was probably better than 80% of the humans that have ever worked on me):
Furthermore, the future potential of AI? It’s almost limitless. It will make extraordinary medical advances possible, advance our civilization in a myriad of ways, and has the potential to dramatically improve the life of the average person.
The flip side of that is that AI, especially if it transitions to AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), is genuinely a threat that could wipe out our species in a variety of ways or create a totalitarian superstate worse than anything even George Orwell could imagine.
That’s why I’m a big believer that one of the most important things we can do as a species is come together and create a worldwide treaty that doesn’t stop AI, but puts some basic safeguards in place across the globe to try to make sure that the AI arms race that is currently going on between every government and corporation on the planet doesn’t lead to us blowing past basic safety protocols and dooming us all. The particulars can be left to the experts, but things are moving so fast that there’s very little time to waste on this front.
Why?
Well, as an example, let me describe a scenario that Internet ethicist Tristan Harris described earlier this month in a discussion with one of the most interesting podcasters on the planet right now, Chris Williamson.
There are two things of note about this. The first is how familiar it will seem to you at first. The second is how disastrous that familiar scenario could end up being, even without any terminator robots or surveillance states. That’s what is so scary about this; In many respects, it’s a description of the IDEAL AI scenario.
First of all, let’s set the parameters here. We’ll assume that AI doesn’t kill us all or lead to a totalitarian state. Instead, let’s just assume that it turns out to essentially create the equivalent of the Computer and DATA from Star Trek. Highly intelligent, competent programs/robots that want to help humanity and do any work that human beings can do:
Granted, that may overstate the effectiveness of AI because there are MANY people who don’t see AI swallowing up most jobs any time soon, if ever. However, two of the people who do seem to believe AI is going to make a huge impact on jobs within the next couple of decades are Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, and Elon Musk, CEO of xAI. Amodei believes AI could wipe out 50% of white-collar jobs in the next five years, and Musk thinks it’s on track to essentially make work optional in the next one to two decades. Of course, time will tell, but I think they’re a lot closer to right than the people who think AI is going to be just a job helper or replace a few people around the margins.
So, we’re going to assume that the more aggressive scenario is somewhat on track. Within 10-20 years, jobs for humans are going to be scarce because AI and robots are doing everything for us.
If that were to happen, it begs some super obvious questions like: If nobody has jobs, how do people live? Heck, how do the companies and robots making AI keep going with no one working jobs to pay money for their services? Does the economy just grind to a halt? What happens in that scenario?
The truth is that nobody really knows, and there’s not an OBVIOUS answer, although at this early juncture, there seem to be better and worse scenarios that will be compounded by a wide variety of factors.
As a starting point, we live in an interconnected world where many of us, perhaps justifiably, feel very little concern about some of those connected pieces. For example, countries like India, Mexico, and the Philippines have an awful lot of workers who get paid to do customer service over the phone for Americans. If, let’s say, Anthropic, xAI, or ChatGPT create AI agents who completely replace those jobs, those countries would take a huge hit, but the attitude here would almost certainly be, “Too bad, so sad, not our problem.”
Of course, closer to home, here’s something to consider: When have extremely wealthy people and corporations WIILINGLY given the majority of the wealth they collected to the general public? MAYBE when they’re approaching the ends of their lives and realize they “can’t take it with them,” but nobody at the top, that’s in their prime, ever goes, “I want the majority of the money I make to go to other people.”
Yet, what would be the best solution in a world where a handful of corporations earn all the money? Something like the Alaska Permanent Fund, the Norwegian Government Pension Fund, or the UAE’s subsidization of its citizens based on the revenues those places collect from oil. In other words, if nearly all revenue flows through a few AI companies, then a big part of the money from those AI companies would necessarily need to go to the public.
How do we get to that point, though?
Certainly, the AI companies won’t willingly agree to it. Most people are probably thinking, “Duh, we vote in the government, and the government will MAKE THEM agree to it.” However, as Tristan Harris notes, if AI companies actually become that dominant, the relationship between the voters and the government may break because of the “intelligence curse”:
So, there’s something in economics called the resource curse. So think of countries like Venezuela or Sudan, where you discover that that country is sitting on top of a really valuable resource like oil. And then once a bunch of your GDP comes from oil and not from the labor or innovation or development of your people, you invest more in oil infrastructure and not investing in people. You don’t invest in education. You don’t invest in healthcare because oil is where you get your GDP and your growth from. Okay. Okay. This is a well-known fact in economics. It’s called the resource curse.
There’s a wonderful guy named Luke Drago who wrote a piece called The Intelligence Curse. We are about to enter a world where GDP for countries comes more from data centers and intelligence in AI, than it is going to come from the labor of human beings. So everyone’s talking about how AI is going to automate all these jobs, and then we’ll all just sit back with a universal basic income and become painters and poets. And is that actually what’s going to happen? Or when countries get almost all of their revenue from AI and a smaller and smaller percentage from people, do they have an incentive to invest in child care, healthcare, education, the well-being of their people? Or is it basically just hook them up to the social media addiction economy, keep them busy, while basically all the revenue comes from AI companies? And so what I’m trying to get at is this is not a human future. This is not a future that’s in service of regular people. This is a future that’s in service of eight soon-to-be trillionaires who will consolidate all the wealth and disempower basically everybody else. Does that make sense?
If you’re the government in that scenario, who are you more interested in pleasing? A small number of infinitely wealthy, powerful, and influential corporations around which all of our nation’s tax revenue revolves, or what you view as masses of poor, jobless, hapless mouths to feed (incidentally, that’s you and me, along with almost everyone else in this scenario). How does this play out? It’s hard to say for sure, but there certainly are enough incredibly powerful evil corporations in the movies to make you think, “Yeah, the bad guys very well might win”:
That means maybe we go back to sustenance farming, get some kind of minimal allowance, cool VR helmets, and happy drugs, or try our hands at fighting Terminators that work for the government creates to deal with people that don’t do what they’re told:
What it all comes down to is that AI is unlike any technology that has come before. It has the potential to revolutionize not just an industry or a society, but the way all human beings live from beginning to end. Although many of the changes AI brings may be POSITIVE, it will change so many things, to such a great extent, that it could also be a complete disaster for the human race before it’s all said and done. It would be terrific if we were smart enough to realize that and take the most basic steps to figure out how to make sure that doesn’t happen, but it’s looking increasingly likely that won’t be the case.
Good essay, John. I strongly dislike AI for many reasons and I won't waste time listing them, but many people are prone to be lazy and self-indulgent, right? Look at those people now who try to use government assistance as a way of life- how well does that work out for them, their families, and our culture? In Star Trek TOS there is a planet of androids who take care of people and prevent them from injury by disallowing activities they deem to be potentially harmful. Kirk and crew have to find a way to escape that protection, as the androids seek to expand across the galaxy to save more humans from themselves. AI driven creatures are not gods and can never be allowed to become our source, lest we go from turning to and worshiping the one Jehovah God, to soulless machines who definitely will not hold the keys to eternal life in a glorified body. My speculation is that the Father will put a block on the ability of AI, or corrupt it somehow, like He did when He smashed the Tower of Babel and dispersed the human race into many languages and cultures. For the same reasons I'm confident that He has an insoluble monopoly on time travel as well.
I hear what you’re saying, but…didn’t people say the same thing about mechanical looms, factories more generally, automation of the factories, computers, and the internet? And isn’t the reality that—while jobs were certainly eliminated—they were substituted and more by new jobs that no one even imagined when they made those predictions?
Also…if indeed robots are going to do all the heavy lifting…wouldn’t that imply a significant alleviation of material scarcity? Obviously this wouldn’t be the Federation’s matter transmuters, but…it just seems like we could actually have something resembling a UBI or a negative income tax, thus allowing a subsistence livelihood for anyone who no longer had a job—whether by choice or by involuntary displacement.
Again…not saying you’re wrong. But I can’t help but ask.