The true threat of Artificial Intelligence

In May, more than 350 technology executives, researchers and academics signed a statement warning of the existential dangers of artificial intelligence. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the signatories warned. This came on the heels of another high-profile letter, signed by the likes of Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple, calling for a six-month moratorium on the development of advanced AI systems. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has urged responsible AI innovation, stating that “in order to seize the opportunities” it offers, we “must first manage its risks.” In Congress, Senator Chuck Schumer called for “first of their kind” listening sessions on the potential and risks of AI, a crash course of sorts from industry executives, academics, civil rights activists and other stakeholders.

The mounting anxiety about AI isn’t because of the boring but reliable technologies that autocomplete our text messages or direct robot vacuums to dodge obstacles in our living rooms. It is the rise of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, that worries the experts. AGI doesn’t exist yet, but some believe that the rapidly growing capabilities of OpenAI’s ChatGPT suggest its emergence is near. Sam Altman, a co-founder of OpenAI, has described it as “systems that are generally smarter than humans.” Building such systems remains a daunting — some say impossible — task. But the benefits appear truly tantalising. Imagine Roombas, no longer condemned to vacuuming the floors, that evolve into all-purpose robots, happy to brew morning coffee or fold laundry — without ever being programmed to do these things.

Sounds appealing. But should these AGI Roombas get too powerful, their mission to create a spotless utopia might get messy for their dust-spreading human masters. At least we’ve had a good run.

Discussions of AGI are rife with such apocalyptic scenarios. Yet a nascent AGI lobby of academics, investors and entrepreneurs counter that, once made safe, AGI would be a boon to civilisation. Altman, the face of this campaign, embarked on a global tour to charm lawmakers. Earlier this year he wrote that AGI might even turbocharge the economy, boost scientific knowledge and “elevate humanity by increasing abundance.” This is why, for all the hand-wringing, so many smart people in the tech industry are toiling to build this controversial technology: not using it to save the world seems immoral. They are beholden to an ideology that views this new technology as inevitable and, in a safe version, as universally beneficial. Its proponents can think of no better alternatives for fixing humanity and expanding its intelligence.

But this ideology — call it AGI-ism — is mistaken. The real risks of AGI are political and won’t be fixed by taming rebellious robots. The safest of AGIs would not deliver the progressive panacea promised by its lobby. And in presenting its emergence as all but inevitable, AGI-ism distracts from finding better ways to augment intelligence. Unbeknown to its proponents, AGI-ism is just a bastard child of a much grander ideology, one preaching that, as Margaret Thatcher memorably put it, there is no alternative, not to the market. Rather than breaking capitalism, as Altman has hinted it could do, AGI — or at least the rush to build it — is more likely to create a powerful (and much hipper) ally for capitalism’s most destructive creed: neoliberalism. Fascinated with privatisation, competition and free trade, the architects of neoliberalism wanted to dynamise and transform a stagnant and labor-friendly economy through markets and deregulation.

Some of these transformations worked, but they came at an immense cost. Over the years, neoliberalism drew many, many critics, who blamed it for the Great Recession and financial crisis, Trumpism, Brexit and much else.

It is not surprising, then, that the Biden administration has distanced itself from the ideology, acknowledging that markets sometimes get it wrong. Foundations, think tanks and academics have even dared to imagine a post-neoliberal future.

Yet neoliberalism is far from dead. Worse, it has found an ally in AGI-ism, which stands to reinforce and replicate its main biases: that private actors outperform public ones (the market bias), that adapting to reality beats transforming it (the adaptation bias) and that efficiency trumps social concerns (the efficiency bias).

These biases turn the alluring promise behind AGI on its head: Instead of saving the world, the quest to build it will make things only worse. Here is how. AGI will never overcome the market’s demands for profit.

Remember when Uber, with its cheap rates, was courting cities to serve as their public transportation systems? It all began nicely, with Uber promising implausibly cheap rides, courtesy of a future with self-driving cars and minimal labor costs. Deep-pocketed investors loved this vision, even absorbing Uber’s multibillion-dollar losses. But when reality descended, the self-driving cars were still a pipe dream. The investors demanded returns and Uber was forced to raise prices. Users that relied on it to replace public buses and trains were left on the sidewalk.

The neoliberal instinct behind Uber’s business model is that the private sector can do better than the public sector — the market bias. It’s not just cities and public transit. Hospitals, police departments and even the Pentagon increasingly rely on Silicon Valley to accomplish their missions. With AGI, this reliance will only deepen, not least because AGI is unbounded in its scope and ambition. No administrative or government services would be immune to its promise of disruption.

Moreover, AGI doesn’t even have to exist to lure them in. This, at any rate, is the lesson of Theranos, a start-up that promised to “solve” health care through a revolutionary blood-testing technology and a former darling of America’s elites. Its victims are real, even if its technology never was. After so many Uber- and Theranos-like traumas, we already know what to expect of an AGI rollout. It will consist of two phases. First, the charm offensive of heavily subsidised services. Then the ugly retrenchment, with the overdependent users and agencies shouldering the costs of making them profitable.

Evgeny Morozov is the author of “To Save Everything, Click Here...”

The New York Times