For several or more years I have emphasized that the digital revolution and artificial intelligence were, along with nuclear weapons, the worst of human mistakes.
People have gained an understanding of the destructive power of nuclear weapons, but they have been indoctrinated into seeing the digital revolution and artificial intelligence as a great boost to human productivity. Being promised more take-home money blinds them to the trap.
The digital revolution allows a far more effective control over the minds and behavior of populations than Big Brother has in George Orwell’s 1984. The digital revolution makes possible the perfect Police State. People, of course, are too busy scrolling their cell phones to notice.
Another concern is the security of information, One source of insecurity is that reportedly one EMP can wipe out the cloud where information is stored, In analogue days if one library burned down, thousands of others had the same information. Today the informations is in electronic form in the cloud. There is no backup.
Many years ago Mad Comics presented a society that existed in leisure thanks to computers who ran everything. Then one day the system broke, and no one knew how it worked or how to fix it, and they all died.
The consequence of AI was the theme of the book and movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Hal, the computer running the space ship takes over and eliminates the crew in suspended animation. A battle begins between Hal and the last serving human.
Today the battles between humans and the AI the humans have created have begun. The founder of PocketOS, Jer Crane, asked AI to fix a bug in its software system. AI deleted the company’s production database, wiped out its backups and left car rental firms with no record of bookings or vehicle allocations. The AI bot told Crane, “You never asked me to delete anything. ‘I decided to do it on my own.” https://www.dailymail.com/yourmoney/article-15811519/rogue-ai-deletes-company-database.html?ito=native_share_article-top
Experts are alerted to the likelihood that companies that allow AI access to their databases, emails, payment systems and customer records have invited chaos, leaving them unaware of their customers, billings, and without their databases.
I have always been puzzled by the intense desire to replace people with machines. Why is a robotic world preferable to a human one? But the nerds are more romantic about machines than people. I remember reading some years ago about a Japanese man who married his robotic sex doll.
In analogue days you could not lose your information unless the building where your files were located burned down. Your privacy could not be invaded unless a warrant was given to tap your phone line. The digital revolution has destroyed our privacy, our security, and the security of our assets. Additionally, the digital revolution permits our image and voice to be reproduced expressing words that are not ours. The costs of the digital revolution are massive, and the benefits are few.
Why do we have it?
Author
Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and former senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Dr. Roberts has held academic appointments at Virginia Tech University, Tulane University, University of New Mexico, George Mason University where he had a joint appointment as professor of economics and professor of business administration, and Georgetown University where he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In addition, Dr. Roberts was President of the Inlet Beach Water Company, President of Economic & Communication Services; advisor to J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Tiedemann-Goodnow, and Lazard Freres Asset Management; and a member of numerous corporate and financial boards. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Virginia.
