Artificial Intelligence: the Future of Our Religion-Capitalism Paradigm, New Gods...and the Eminent ? of Humanity

A recent article streamed from the DailyGalaxy web site, "An AI God Will Emerge, Replacing Our Concept of the Divine", 102417) painted a future where Artificial Intelligence (in device or mega-cloud format) may escape from human control after passing some cybernetic threshold of uber-smartness compared to humans. This threshold is, as of yet, undeterminable but felt by a significant number of vocal scientists to be both inevitable and fast creeping up on us.

Pericles21 posits that it will be impossible to sustain human control over future Artificial Intelligence because of our mercantile-dominated Western culture that is dominated by the Capitalist Equation where nearly every item or service is price-tagged and Western (nay, Global) economies are driven to maximize profit. A break in this post is inserted to review this phenomenon:

CAPITALISM EQUATION: Maximum Profit = Revenue - MINIMUM COSTS (where the desired cost goal is ZERO)

ZERO Costs is the 21st century mantra that governs most if not all human activity in this era of global capitalism.

ZERO COSTS is the cause of global wealth inequality and is killing working humanity by its consequences: elimination of raw material costs by resource robbery in non-developed nations, outsourcing of manufacturing to lowest wage areas, the elimination or at least emasculation of unions, and increasing productivity through automation which serves to reduce labor cost(human participation in manufacturing) to a goal of ZERO!

Capitalism's goal of ZERO LABOR COST will essentially be achieved as automation becomes widespread and eventually human labor becomes fully redundant with Artificial Intelligence taking over from all labor activities.

The ascendency of this simple Capitalism Equation (destruction of Labor's negotiating powers by eleiminating unions and automation) has been a steady trend since industrialization was introduce in the 19th century, with certain halts such as the period after the Great Depression, principally the Roosevelt programs that promoted a balance of power between labor and capital. But there was also a second attempt to restore that power balance through an appeal to reason and observation that unfettered capital development was ruining our water and air quality that quite naturally deteriorated the health of workers and the general population...thus negatively affecting worker productivity. A strong voice among economists bringing attention to this need for Capitalism to support policies that acknowledged Capitalism's shared accountability in preserving clean water and air through appropriate manufacturing practices and government guidelines (regulations) was what Pericles21 calls the 'Samuelson School' of the 1980s (Samuelson, MIT). Unfortunately, after a brief popularity the Capitalism world re-established its former myopia regarding the public weal and went full out to complete the destruction of American unions and further its CAPITALISM EQUATION goal of ZERO COSTS.

This brings this discussion back to Artificial Intelligence...which will, unless managed in some way, complete the process of making human labor and humans in general, redundant!

The process of making the working human labor, and humans themselves, redundant will be unstoppable as long as Western culture is, unquestioned, shaped and ruled by the profit-driven, unbreakable partnership between Western religion's gods and modern, unfettered global capitalism, aka Neo-liberalism - all of these will allow unthinking acceleration of technologies that serve purely to promote the Capitalist Equation (ZERO LABOR COST). If not a declared partnership, the relationship between economic-corporate-society and religion has become mutually supportive, mutually protecting and mutually preserving. The first two traits of the 'Partnership' might be seen as positive or at least non-destructive, but the third trait is negative because it traps humanity into a whirlpool of its own making, greed of profit and what profit will 'buy'.

Yes, it appears human 'civilization' has beecome simply defined as 'Buy' (how much available to buy, what to buy and what next can (must?) be bought to satisfy basic urges that are not 'needs'. Humanity's real 'needs (those of the world's needy, i.e., food, clean water, clothing, housing, health care, education ...are now ignored because the needy have no money to Buy right now...and the corporate frame is short term, quarterly at best. The corporatist frame can't wait a decade for an educated and more productive, and more consuming, citizenry to appear after a social makeover!.

Given this dynamic and the increased profitability of Ai replacing inefficient human labor, the uber-Ai threshold is inevitable, approaching rapidly, and can't be stopped without some major social-economic adjustment...which is not likely.

Pericles21, secondly posits that the uber-Ai threshold for exceeding human 'smartness' is between 5-10 years (probably already here in some defense agency projects). 'We' can do nothing more than hold onto our hats and ride it wherever 'it', not 'we', goes.

The preparative signs of a coming demotion of human importance is already here, most significantly being the gross, global mal-distribution of wealth and income..where the net assets of several billion 'poor' are exceeded by the assets of only a few hundred or less uber-rich.

Humanity is stuck neck deep in our own muck and mire generated by greed, lust, selfishness and the other human frailties we know about and fret about but they are supported or preserved by that sacred partnership between what we believe in - the joining of religion and capitalism.

What is it about us humans and technical progress that seems to entrap us in our own technical cleverness where we injure our health with untested pharmaceuticals, injure our environment (and again, our health) by grossly polluting factories and our failure to conceive of consequences of letting industrial waste be dumped willy-nilly into our water and air as if it no longer is our concern if we can't see it?

Whatever 'It" is about human shortsightedness, we have been unable to learn to slow down and think about what demons technical progress might unchain. And so it seems we are faced with unseen consequences that might accompany uncontrolled development of Artificial Intelligence.

Except, there is a growing movement to try to see what might come upon humanity from super-intelligent artificial constructs.

Under the current 'religion-capitalism' partnership that seems to dominate the Western world, it will be difficult to stop Ai progress as long as economic profits appear linked with Ai. Current Western religions and associated gods are thereby doomed by human greed, selfishness, etc... the human frailties. This good for progress but bad for 'stability', i.e., the status quo. Bottom line -corporate-speak), unfettered capitalism will have to be 'made over', or go.
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An AI God Will Emerge --"Replacing Our Concept of the Divine"
October 24, 2017