Maybe the A.I. dystopia is already here
You know the scenario from 19th-century fiction and Hollywood movies: Mankind has invented a computer, or a robot or another artificial thing that has taken on a life of its own. In “ Frankenstein,” the monster is built from corpses; in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” it’s an all-seeing computer with a human voice; in “Westworld,” the robots are lifelike androids that begin to think for themselves. But in almost every case, the out-of-control artificial life form is anthropomorphic. It has a face or a body, or at least a human voice and a physical presence in the real world.
But what if the real threat from “artificial life” doesn’t look or act human at all? What if it’s just a piece of computer code that can affect what you see and therefore what you think and feel? In other words — what if it’s a bot, not a robot?
For those who don’t know (and apologies to those who are wearily familiar), a bot really is just a piece of computer code that can do things that humans can do. Wikipedia uses bots to correct spelling and grammar on its articles; bots can also play computer games or place gambling bets on behalf of human controllers. Notoriously, bots are now a major force on social media, where they can “like” people and causes, post comments, react to others. Bots can be programmed to tweet out insults in response to particular words, to share Facebook pages, to repeat slogans, to sow distrust.
Slowly, their influence is growing. One tech executive told me he reckons that half of the users on Twitter are bots, created by companies that either sell them or use them to promote various causes. The Computational Propaganda Research Project at the University of Oxford has described how bots are used to promote either political parties or government agendas in 28 countries. They can harass political opponents or their followers, promote policies, or simply seek to get ideas into circulation.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/maybe-the-ai-dystopia-is-already-here/2017/07/28/d0b4c8ae-7392-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html
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AI is increasing productivity here and now and the pace is increasing. The question is: where will the benefits go? Will they to make the rich richer? Or will they go to improve all of society? Society can afford to distribute this new productivity, and the rich did not earn it just by being rich.
Did you think (like Ken Olsen, CEO of Digital) that home computers would be good for storing recipes and not much else? AI is here.
The main effects of climate change will be felt 50 and 100 years from now. Similarly large effects from AI will be felt 20-40 years from now, and probably sooner. The rate of acceleration is much greater than the rate of acceleration of climate change.
Population rise is slowing dramatically and is not the problem it was feared it would be. The problem with food is not production, as you think ("food supplies barely keeping up"
but with distribution. The famine in South Sudan is a crisis manufactured by politicians in the region, exacerbated by drought but not created by drought.
Nobody, least of all me, is suggesting solving "problems that probably will never happen". Wealth and income inequality is here and now. It's a world-wide problem, it is getting worse, and the US has a bad case of it.
Wealth and income inequality is a big part of the psyche of hard tRump supporters, except they look backward and put it on immigrants and Democrats. They've been conned by Republicons.
Sure we have problems now. But wealth and income inequality is making ALL of them worse. Further, AI has great potential to help lessen many of those problems even as it (like all change) presents its own problems.
I am not confused and I did not "miswrite" my post.
I did not write about myself, but you misinterpreted my post to be about myself.
Now you accuse me of confusing the USA with Venezuela. You are making ridiculous accusations. Further, the problem in oil-rich Venezuela is not income; it is the far-left-wing authoritarian dictatorship.
I find it difficult to discuss when you don't read what I write and distort it. I may have to stop with this.
There is no such thing as electric pricing. Pricing is not electric unless you are thrilled by a sale on men's suits.
There is electricity pricing. Even when electricity rates are set by commissions, the energy sources used to produce that electricity are free to fluctuate, so utilities use artificial intelligence to switch sources for optimum cost reduction. Energy commodity prices are influenced by AI analysis and advice.
