Can AI Be Trusted?

[Shadow1980]

Mnementh said:

Shadow1980 said:

"AI" is just a tool. The actual question is ask is "Can the people who stand to profit or otherwise benefit from it be trusted to use it responsibly?"

The answer to that question is a resounding, unequivocal "No."

(Sorry I cut out your post to keep this answer readable.)

I agree, but I would add: this current way of organizing society and production is not inevitable or without alternative. And I don't mean soviet style socialism or going back to aristrocratic feudalism. And there is a chance here from AI too. Capitalism was so successful, because it is brilliant in optimizing for a scarce resource: human labour. But it fails once labour is not scarce anymore. Which we partly already have and is strengthened by the AI revolution. In this capitalism and free markets will collapse itself, because worker wages are not only means of production, they are also needed to become consumers to buy these products. So the companies will release most workers and save a lot of money, only to see their businesses crash because most people are poor.

To solve the problem we need to decouple securing the basic livelyhood of people (food, living space and so on) from working. I personally like the idea of UBI, but I am sure clever people have more clever solutions. We just need to implement them. And not only because of AI, capitalism is also preventing a sokution for climate change. And AI may give us the needs, because these ideas aren't anymore "too expensive" and "naive fairy tales". If AI can replace a lot of labour, we can generate easily enough to secure peoples lives and guarantee a basic lifestyle. There is no "but then the economy crumbles under the load of the freeloaders" anymore. Because AI can increase production efficiency enough to handle the freeloaders.

And a recommendation, 10 years ago author Marshall Brain wrote a story that now seems very prophetic: "Manna – Two Views of Humanity’s Future". In which he describes how a computer program is able to take over more and more work and replace the workers. And society collapses. But it is named two views, because he also shows an alternative, in which the same software is used to serve humans and humanity instead of corporations. It is a free read on his homepage:

https://marshallbrain.com/manna

Personally, I think we should move to some sort of co-op-based system, where the workers directly and equitably own and control the means of production and vote for whoever is in leadership positions. Just as I don't trust wealthy businessmen to run the economy for everyone's benefit, I don't trust the state to do so, either. Sure, the state is better for running a handful of essential big-picture public goods like infrastructure, emergency services, defense, public safety, prisons, and health insurance (whenever those things get privatized, it's a disaster for everyone but the shareholders), but government bureaucracy shouldn't be the ones tasked with determining things like, say, what flavors of ice cream are made, what works of entertainment are produced, or what components go into consumer electronics. As I said, our only choices aren't Ayn Rand and Vladimir Lenin.

Barring a move to a co-op based system, I think an acceptable alternative would be to mandate that all voting shares in a publicly-traded corporation be split equally among all employees (and only employees), from the CEO on down to the janitor.

In any case, we really do need some sort of workplace democracy, where workers have actual power over their labor and working conditions. Economic power should lie with the people directly and be spread out as diffusely as possible. Organized labor and its ability to collectively bargain and go on strikes is the only power any workers have right now, and even that can result in long, protracted disputes. That would be unnecessary if the workers owned and controlled things directly.

And if the workers were the ones in charge of the economy, we'd be able to integrate new labor-saving technology into the economy in a way that services the people rather than some small class of ultra-wealthy individuals who seek to perpetually grow their personal fortunes.