We are, of course, seeing this first hand now. Multiple countries, including the UK are challenging Elon Musk regarding Grok. At the moment, only over the nudity aspect but at least it raises some awareness that one of the major models is totally dominated by a drug-fuelled extreme right-wing nazi. The other major models are all vulnerable to control by tech billionaires or governments (or both) most of whom have proven themselves less than stable and only doing things for themselves, not others.
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I wonder, this doom panic has been around for many new technologies? For example piracy or I remember from my childhood GTA had 18 years age limit haha. Look at it now, a few red pixels? But eventually, the new scary doom becomes old and/or more publicly available. It might have been important to control and limit in the start, but in the end, perhaps we all can fire up our own free groks on a laptop or phone. And then it's not something for tech billionaires and governments can control?
Well, I've ALWAYS been a technologist - even as a child I was fascinated by technology more than anything else. So I'm not inclined to doom panic over new tech. And honest, it is not the technology I fear - despite some high-profile people doing scare mongering. No, it is the amount of CONTROL that is ending up in the hands of a few, immensely rich and powerful people.
The outcome I see from what is happening now is absolutely going to end up with further control by them. We are rapidly heading towards a new feudal society. More people failing to use knowledge to understand things, more people slurping up social media (also controlled by billionaires and governments) for their "news" fix, more social media dominated by AI slop (often driven by deliberate, nation-state-level misinformation).
Until recently, many of us who have read 1984 by George Orwell - while gravely nodding our heads at the dangers, didn't really think it would happen in a modern society. But look at the current reality around us. More and more societies all over the globe are tightly controlled by their governments feeding them endless propaganda and misinformation. Even in the West, all of the big media platforms are controlled by a few, right-leaning billionaires.
In terms of tech, more and more consolidation happens such that the platforms again are controlled by the few, rich and powerful.
This is my fear over AI. It isn't the tech.
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It has happened more times in history than you might think:
- English monarchy
- French monarchy
- Roman Empire
- Ming Dynasty
- Aztecs
- ...
That power is concentrated in the hands of the few is actually the default case. It's only been these few years (comparable to the invention of the printing press) were power slipped out of the hands of the few and came to the many. Of those many, a few became powerful enough to move from the "many" to the "few". (I'm thinking here of the tech billionaires who tended to come from nowhere to now be part of the few).
So even that, being controlled by the few, isn't really innovation, rather repetition.
Also beware of the dead guiding societal norms. There are many foundations that were began by long dead people. These foundations now control the direction of societies through lobbying, sponsoring and grants. This is the dead controlling the future of the living. Also a form of control that is often overlooked. It could also be something new since these foundations didn't exist in such numbers as they do today (however certain large religions organisation also fall into this category of societal control).
Yes the normalisation of violence has been very successful and damaging to societies. Also helped by the phraseology around wars: e.g. "collateral damage" "friendly fire" etc In addition, the distancing between death and those that bring death: drone warfare where pilots sit in an office somewhere staring at screens while NPCs (aka civilians) are unhappily destroyed as "collateral damage" by remote controlled drones and guided missiles.
This added abstraction away from the misery of war has made modern warfare an alternative to diplomacy and negotiation. This can be seen in the sudden military buildup around Greenland, not to mention other resource rich countries in other parts of the world.
