Dear Reader,
I have kept two books on artificial intelligence.
In one book it is a nearly perfect slave of humanity. It may vault human productivity into realms truly inconceivable.
What category of endeavor would defy its reach? Innovations in the scientific fields alone could compress decades of progress into months or less.
And could artificial intelligence strike the chains of debt bondage that bind down the United States?
Here I refer to the national debt.
Can AI Solve the Debt Crisis?
Artificial intelligence wizard Zoltan Istvan explains how AI — twinned with cryptocurrency — could potentially liberate the United States:
- A fully autonomous AI agent is programmed to go on to the internet and create cryptocurrency wallets, then create crypto currencies, then endlessly create millions of similar versions of itself that want to trade that crypto…
- Super rich AIs could be a solution to the United States’ growing debt crisis, and eliminate the need for whether countries like China can continue to buy our debt so we can indefinitely print dollars. In fact, can America launch its own AI agents to create enough crypto wealth to buy its debt?
Is such a scheme plausible?
I do not know. Yet it is just harebrained enough to fetch me.
And so artificial intelligence goes upon the positive side of my ledger.
Yet I place it there with hesitation…
A Tiger by the Tail
I stated that I keep two books on artificial intelligence.
The second book reflects my deep… suspicion… of artificial intelligence.
I concede the possibility that artificial intelligence may make a slave of man — rather than man making a slave of artificial intelligence.
Perhaps humanity has the AI tiger well and truly by the tail.
What if the thing “takes over?”
The abovesaid Istvan, for example, has his worries:
- My Oxford professor Nick Bostrom… once postulated: What if we programmed a learning AI to make paper clips of everything? If that AI was powerful enough, and we couldn’t stop it, would that AI make paper clips of everything it came in touch with? Buildings, animals, even people? It might. It might destroy the entire Earth.
As I do not know if the debt-liberation theory is plausible… I do not know if the doomsday theory is plausible.
Yet should we not investigate the doomsday theory now… before this AI genius idiot fashions us into scrap later?
AI Puts Its Finger on the Button
Or what if some other AI genius idiot bungles us into nuclear war?
Freedom Financial News contributor Jim Rickards has previously advised the Central Intelligence Agency.
More recently he has participated in a project to “apply generalized superintelligence and AI to national security tasks.”
Says Mr. Rickards, his voice cracking:
- AI/GPT may also be the greatest threat to nuclear escalation because it has an internal logic that’s inconsistent with the human logic that has kept nuclear peace for the past 80 years… It’s a threat you’re not hearing anything about, but it needs to be addressed… AI/GPT systems have already found their way into the nuclear warfighting process.
Is It Really a Good Idea to Let AI Run Everything?
And what if some other AI genius idiot initiates a cascading selloff in the stock market?
How could you end it?
You may yank the circuit breaker. But the brilliant malefactor has anticipated your conduct and negates your inputs.
Stocks spiral and spiral.
And can we trust artificial intelligence to tell us the truth, Mr. Rickards?
- AI is already being programmed with woke ideology… You probably recall Google’s ridiculous Gemini AI-backed image generator that depicted Black Vikings, female popes and other absurd images. You can imagine the dystopian future that a woke superintelligence could create.
I can imagine it. And I do not like it one jot.
The Human Note
When we consider artificial intelligence we must likewise consider the human note.
Some 40–50% of human occupations may be subject to automation over the next 15–20 years.
These occupations are not limited to trucking, taxi driving, manufacturing and construction.
To these we must add white-collared jobs in law, finance, medicine, accounting, etc.
What would become of the attorney at law, I wonder — and the human helmsman of the ambulance he chases?
What happens when artificial intelligence, drilled into robots, acquires the brains and brawn to perform nearly all human labor?
Creative Destruction on Steroids
Innovation and technology have always allowed humans to mine fresh sources of productive employment.
The 19th-century farmer became the 20th-century factory worker… became the 21st-century computer programmer.
Now introduce the omnipotent AI robot.
A robotic brute that can drive home a rivet is one thing by itself. Yet a genius robot that could perform all human labor — yet better — is another entirely.
This robot would tower above the human as the human towers above the beasts of the field.
An Aristotle, a da Vinci, an Einstein would be pygmies next to it.
What human ability would lie beyond this unnatural beast?
Not even the oldest profession is safe from robotic invasion — but let it pass for now.
Not All Change is Progress
I believe the river of progress must carry forward.
Do you reject progress?
Then you must believe the man who tamed fire should burn eternally… that the wheel’s inventor should be broken upon the very same wheel…
That Franklin should have fried in an electric chair for discovering electricity… that Ford should have been flattened by the Model A he created… that Salk should sulk in eternal misery for scotching polio.
If this is what you believe, please drive on. I do not believe it. Yet let us recognize:
The advancing river of progress sometimes takes the human note with it. And not all change is progress.
Let’s Figure It Out Now, While We Can
An artificial intelligence that translates us into paper clips is certainly change. Yet is it progress?
An artificial intelligence that initiates nuclear war is certainly change. Yet is it progress?
An artificial intelligence that puts an obsolete humanity permanently to pasture is certainly change.
Yet is it progress?
I hazard we should answer these questions now, while we can…
Before artificial intelligence answers them for us.
We may not like its answers.
Regards,
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News