A case against AI

Last week, OpenAI co-founder Sutskever’s AI startup SSI raised $1 billion. Surprisingly, the sumptuous funding of yet another startup using a technology that many experts consider as nefarious for the survival of our species was met with indifference, if not outright praise. Aside from the disconnected remarks made in June by Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, who suggested that AI would allow people to “spend more time with their families” (without offering any evidence of this himself), no industry insiders, social researchers, or economists have identified any significant positive aspects of this technology. On the contrary, all experts agree this is a catastrophic development for humanity—a catastrophic step that also clashes with our current economic model, which is based on efficiency. The contradiction between profit and survival lies at the heart of the AI debate, yet no one seems to want to have that discussion.

Do not take my word for it—the writing has been on the wall for a while. Nouriel Roubini’s 2022 article, The Age of Megathreats, highlights the shift from the relative stability of the post-WWII era to a world plagued by severe threats. These include geopolitical conflicts, climate change, pandemics, and technological disruptions like AI. Roubini warns of the rising risks of war, including nuclear conflicts, economic turmoil, and environmental crises. He describes a transition toward deglobalization, protectionism, and growing inequality. As central banks tighten monetary policies, stagflation and hard landings become more likely, exacerbating the challenges of navigating this precarious new era. Roubini’s article suffers from the “bikini effect”—what it conceals is much more intriguing than what it reveals. Of all the megathreats he warned about two years ago, all have man-made solutions that he pointed out. We can negotiate entente with Russia, control population growth and resource usage to reverse climate change, and fight pandemics with more transparency and better research. But when it comes to the dangers of AI, Roubini—usually candid when it comes to grim predictions—remains silent. AI presents such a catastrophic future that there are no solutions to offer because the scale of the problem is not even measurable.

Roubini’s article does mention the growing threat of artificial intelligence emphasizing that advances in AI, robotics, and automation will destroy more jobs, even in creative and cognitive fields. Language models like GPT-4 are already outperforming many humans in tasks like writing, raising concerns about job displacement. The rise of artificial general intelligence could eventually render Homo sapiens obsolete. As AI continues to evolve, the economic malaise will deepen, and inequality will increase, leaving more workers behind in both white- and blue-collar jobs.

Historian Yuval Noah Harari warns that AI, combined with biotechnology, could lead to extreme inequality by concentrating wealth and power. It is now obvious that it will. We see demonstrations on the streets about climate change, wars, and vaccine mandates but regarding this technology that directly affects all our livelihoods—crickets. No one wants to kill the chicken laying the golden eggs even though it is obvious we cannot eat gold. The economic strategy of governments (like the US and Israel) is based on a zero-sum technology that might destroy our species and the worst part is that we all know it.

Artificial Inteligence versus Mankind

AI brings corporations the efficiency no human can match. And this is the whole point. AI is not a tool, like the factory in the 19th century or the personal computer in the last 40 years, AI is the culmination of the industrial revolution, where human labor has always been the enemy. The reduction of labor costs has always been the main objective of any capitalist enterprise. The moment you replace human labor you drive down the main production cost. This has been the goal of the 1.0 revolution or “internet revolution” of the last 20 years. This has been the growth model so far of the state of Israel and no other state in the World has profited as much from it. That’s right, Israel’s growth model of the last 20 years is based on financing engineers and very smart people to find online tools to get humans out of the job. And the corporate world could not love it more.

All good so far but here is where the plot thickens, the party ends, and they are about to turn on the lights. Everyone will need to go home. Including Israel. The problem with this model that the CEOs and investors of this technology do not see because they are turning a profit with it, is that work is not a luxury or a curiosity that can be replaced by a universal source of income provided by the government. Work and creative endeavors are human needs like breathing, eating, or sex. Humans need to work and to feel valuable, and this is a universal truth that no marketing campaign will ever change nor any AI-planned police charges ever crush.

Our society works by dogmas, we had religion for thousands of years, and then Marx came and said the revolution of the proletariat is “inevitable” meaning you can disagree with his analysis but his results will still happen. With the fall of Marxism came the internet age which brought us the technological dogma “if it’s technological it´s good”. From cell phones to the internet, to personal computers in our pockets we embraced it all, dominated by FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Technology became our G-d and if you contradict it or stand in its way, you will be told, as the old Marxists did, that it is “inevitable.” Adapt or die. I don’t know the future like the crystal ball reader Yuval Harari, previously mentioned in this article, but I tell you what seems to be obvious from what we already know. The fight against AI and the erasure by the corporate world of human labor is “inevitable” because it contradicts human nature. No matter the number of decades in which humans fool themselves into believing that the Sutskevers of the world line their pockets for their benefit and that the governments know what they are doing, eventually the struggle against AI will inevitably be the most important in the history of our species.