Will AI take us over?

Night thoughts while being terrified about the future of democracy

Friends,

I don’t know about you, but I’m not sleeping well. I blame Trump and, to a lesser extent, the Democrats. The limbo Democrats are in now is driving me nuts. We could be witnessing the twilight of democracy.

Now, it’s all Trump and Biden. But we may look back at this time and realize that under our noses a revolution in AI was taking place that had even greater impact on our democracy than who becomes president next year.

Who will the “we” be who’ll be looking back and realizing this? AI has the potential to displace human beings.

Listen to the AI optimists (who are already making fortunes peddling AI) and you hear nothing but predictions of wonderful things. Jensen Huang, the C.E.O. of Nvidia, the dominant maker of the chips used to power A.I., says the technology has already ushered in “the next industrial revolution.” Sam Altman of the ChatGPT maker OpenAI sees A.I. wiping out poverty.

I think the AI optimists are wrong. AI will take over many if not most of the professional and white collar jobs now being done by people. This will occur within the next fifteen years.

More importantly, AI is also likely to take over most of the power being exercised by people.

We assume that AI will be working for us, but it seems more likely to be the other way around. We will be working for it. We think we’ll be programming AI, but I think it more likely that AI will be programming us.

AI will dictate how we work. It will tell us what to do. It will tell us where we do it. It will organize our days. In effect, it will be our employer, our boss, our educator, our director.

Think of the GPS tracking device in our cellphones, which tells us how to get from one point on the earth to another. Magnify its scope and power a millionfold, and apply it to all aspects of our lives. This is likely to be the AI future: From the moment we awaken to the moment we fall asleep — and even during our sleep — AI will direct us.

We will be lured into believing it’s good for us. It will keep us alive. It will help us survive. It will enable us to feel better. It will empower us.

Maybe it will do all these things, even as we become its unwitting servants and we lose our independence.

Human beings will never know they are no longer in charge of their lives because AI will preserve the illusion of human agency. But it will be only an illusion.

There may still be time to control AI, in order to keep humans in control. But let me ask an awkward question: Would it be so awful if we humans were no longer in control?

I don’t mean to sound like a grouchy old man but, honestly, have we done such a terrific job while we’ve been in control?

Or have we f*cked up so badly that AI will almost surely be an improvement?