An analysis in 12 steps:
- All our government structures which implement fairness and justice (democracy, separation of powers, the legal system) have the only purpose to perpetuate the rule of the strong over the weak. You know the famous joke: „democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what they will have for dinner“. As things are now, fairness and justice in our societies are mere illusions. Social system, welfare, retirement pensions etc. are only a manifestation of the fact that the weak have significant power too if they cooperate. These institutions are tolerated by the more powerful because they are still required to guarantee the important stability. The current „fair“ order of society reflects its power distribution which is still relatively favorable for the less privileged. This is very important to understand if we don’t want to lull ourselves into a false sense of security. No, democracy will not save you if you lose your power. You will find yourself in the same hopeless and defenseless state an inhabitant of a slum in Nairobi is today. Today we are competing intensely against each other, on the level of individuals and on the level of countries. If you don't believe this remind yourself of the thousands of immigrants drowning in the Mediterranean See every year (and only a few people in Europe really care).
- In the not so far future, because of technological progress, the strong will be a million times stronger than the weak. How is this possible? It’s a direct consequence of the exponential growth law which governs technological progress: even if every person on this planet gets knowledgable in A.I. technology one day, the differences in how early these people started to learn will one day inevitably create large differences in their capabilities. This will be the case, even if the delays are small. Therefore very large differences in power will be unavoidable even if we assume an unrealistic „perfect schools for everyone“ scenario.
- This also means that in the future you will be much weaker than the very small elite with an extremely high probability. Maybe the elite will even consist of only one person at some point in time. Statistics predicts that you most probably will not be this person.
- The situation is aggravated by slow changing intellectual property laws: the protection periods remain constant (or get, in the case of copyright, even extended) but the rate of knowledge discovery is exponential. This means that IP law will give an increasing advantage to the IP holders. Technical solutions (DRM = Digital Rights Management) make it increasingly easy to enforce intellectual property rights.
- Technology gives power only to those who understand it. And today, only a small elite of scientists and engineers understands how technology really works. The uninformed will need companies or government institutions which protect their technological systems from being abused. They cannot live without technology, because they will need it to remain competitive. Which means they are ultimately forced to transfer the power over their computers and communication systems to the few who understand: IT corporations and governments.
- Technology can today also give substantial power to individuals. This power will have to be more and more limited to ensure the safety of society. Society will have to protect itself from criminals which are armed with all kinds of technology: from the terrorist with an assault rifle to the hacker which steals credit card information or distributes ransomware to the social media user which spreads fake news using an A.I. downloaded from the internet.
- Corporations and governments will, under pretext (or maybe the honest motivation) to protect citizens, build an infrastructure to control and limit the flow and storage of information (including program code): in an information society, information can be a powerful weapon. Encrypted communication will be forbidden, A.I.‘s and cryptography will make sure it is impossible to store documents containing certain ideas on a computer or run „harmful“ software on it [1].
- Together with this „Orwellian“ measures (surveillance etc.) will come „Huxley“-type ones: flooding the masses with shallow (but well controlled) entertainment. This might even happen without evil intentions, as thought-provoking material might cause troubles for the providers (social media „shitstorms“, protests, problems with government censorship etc.). They might decide to not show them to the public to avoid the associated cost and brand damage.
- Because of the mechanisms described above, it will not take long until a small elite will gain total control over the masses [2].
- At some point in time the masses will be no longer required by the elite as the robots and A.I.‘s they control will do all the necessary work. As people will be still considered a threat, there will be a huge temptation for the elite to simply eliminate them. People will have no chance fighting back, as intelligent robots or advanced biological weapons will be used to do the dirty job. Also simple economic pressure could be used to marginalize or get rid of them.
- Because of the exponential growth of our technological capabilities, the process described above will start soon and will progress very fast. There is little time left to choose an alternative path. If we don‘t change direction soon, we will end up in a terrifying dystopia. Do not underestimate exponential growth: the damage will appear rather harmless for a long time but will explode almost suddenly at some point in time.
- As technological progress cannot be stopped (human knowledge can only increase), the only other driving factor we could possibly change is competition. What if we stopped competing and started cooperating on a planetary scale? I believe such a step is not only without alternative, but also possible and in everyone’s interest (even the elites!).
Footnotes:
[1] This is, to some extent, already the case today: „Google drive“ does not allow you to store certain text documents with „harmful“ content. Computer platforms are getting increasingly „closed“, only allowing you to install software from an official app repository.
[2] Also this is becoming reality in a growing number of countries.
Image: Shutterstock / Trismegist san
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