Artificial Intelligence and Abdication
In this brilliant piece, Ted Chiang argues that artificial intelligence (
Is there a way for
A.I. to do something other than sharpen the knife blade of capitalism? Just to be clear, when I refer to capitalism, I’m not talking about the exchange of goods or services for prices determined by a market, which is a property of many economic systems. When I refer to capitalism, I’m talking about a specific relationship between capital and labor, in which private individuals who have money are able to profit off the effort of others. So, in the context of this discussion, whenever I criticize capitalism, I’m not criticizing the idea of selling things; I’m criticizing the idea that people who have lots of money get to wield power over people who actually work. And, more specifically, I’m criticizing the ever-growing concentration of wealth among an ever-smaller number of people, which may or may not be an intrinsic property of capitalism but which absolutely characterizes capitalism as it is practiced today.As it is currently deployed,
A.I. often amounts to an effort to analyze a task that human beings perform and figure out a way to replace the human being. Coincidentally, this is exactly the type of problem that management wants solved. As a result,A.I. assists capital at the expense of labor. There isn’t really anything like a labor-consulting firm that furthers the interests of workers. Is it possible forA.I. to take on that role? CanA.I. do anything to assist workers instead of management?Some might say that it’s not the job of
A.I. to oppose capitalism. That may be true, but it’s not the job ofA.I. to strengthen capitalism, either. Yet that is what it currently does. If we cannot come up with ways forA.I. to reduce the concentration of wealth, then I’d say it’s hard to argue thatA.I. is a neutral technology, let alone a beneficial one.
It seems that