If the left prevails, agentic AI becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy promoting dependency, surveillance culture and indoctrination--America and Canada edge closer to becoming “welfare states.”
Where do conservatives stand on the issue of AI? The American and (with equal measure) the Canadian electorates need to know. Here is the view from “the States.”
They’re clear about the Second Amendment, national security, abortion, the border--the voters know where conservatives stand on these issues--November 4, 2024 attests to that.
But they are less clear on the issue of AI, itself, or conservative America’s position relative to it. Yet, AI is not new on the scene--a novel phenomenon. The term "artificial intelligence" was first coined in 1955 by John McCarthy during a workshop at Dartmouth College. This event is considered the birth of AI as a field of study; it’s just that its trajectory has recently accelerated dramatically.
While it may be true that politics is derived from culture, the reverse is otherwise with technological innovation--computer-generated algorithms influence culture in myriad and burgeoning ways. It can control and--likely will--affect Americans in a direct, personal and substantive way for some time to come.
There is a narrative war underway in America regarding AI, and those amongst us of a more conservative orientation cannot afford to become complacent in either its development or control over it.
AI is not a “tool”--it is potentially a weapon--an information system that will substantially affect (over a not very distant horizon) national security, education, commerce, economics, employment. It is easier numerically to list what it will not touch than what it will.
Development and control of the narrative is critical because of the principal concern with Artificial Intelligence: agentic AI--this new phase of AI adoption can reason, learn and make decisions on its own with minimal, if any, human intervention.
Americans typically default on issues about automation with the same refrain: “we’ve heard this before;” the “robots will rule”--but “it never happens.” Technology creates jobs and eliminates them. The free market always sorts it out. Today, however, the circumstances are different--the risks are greater, more consequential.
Some argue that LLMs [Large Language Models] are just stochastic systems--parroting patterns found in data. Nothing new? These deep-learning systems like Sam Altman’s OpenAI ChatGPT are loaded with vast amounts of text data, allowing them to perform multiple tasks with immediacy--answering questions, summarizing text, translating languages--and are becoming increasingly integrated into the internet, numerous commercial venues and the government.
Those who study, develop and are (as we speak) building AI have a different refrain. And this is pivotal to my point concerning agentic AI. Are the comments we’re hearing from the likes of, as recently as two months ago, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei valid--that you’re going to see the elimination of half of white-collar entry-level positions?
The narrative war can be distilled down to this: can the American people be convinced to take AI, especially agentic AI, seriously--that job displacements at scale are a real likelihood, but without having to undermine what made America the envy of the world?
And there is more regarding agentic AI and the narrative war than one might realize. The left already has their position staked out. It can be expressed through OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s social experiment as president of Y Combinator in 2016, where he advocated for offering low-income individuals $1,000--no questions asked.
As technology eliminates jobs and massive new wealth gets created, Altman added, “…we’re going to see some version of this at a national scale.”
For advocates of the free market and those that subscribe to some version of the Judeo-Christian work ethic, Altman’s vision is, at the very least, disconcerting--clearly an espousal for some form of universal basic income--UBI.
To be sure, Altman’s 2016 comments about Trump as well as his social experiment are--in some measure--at the heart of the left’s orientation in the AI narrative war.
What is operative, here, is the Moravec paradox--the idea that things that adult human beings find difficult cognitively are easy for machines (like computing systems) to accomplish; if this is so, and apparently it is, white-collar jobs tend to be just as much at risk, or more so, than those of a blue-collar nature.
And given this paradox, a substantial threat from agentic AI exists for virtually all forms of bureaucratic interface in America, in particular through--invisible algorithms which predispose to one decision as opposed to another, especially regarding bias, AI-powered social credit scoring, digital de-banking already occurring and scan-and-ban technology. Moreover, workers who are not at the end of their careers will experience a virtually insurmountable “speed efficiency deficit” because of the speed with which the ground beneath their feet is shifting.
So, can we convince Americans that job displacements at scale are imminent and inevitable without acquiescing to the left’s position of the necessity for UBI and progressively greater dependency on AI and the government, media and commercial venues which control its algorithms and potentially us?
An alternative conservative narrative should be, instead, to heed the warnings of the Godfather of AI, George Hinton: “AI will make a few people much richer and most people poorer.” The AI pioneer estimates a 10% to 20% risk that artificial intelligence will eventually take control from humans. Listen to the dozens of AI scientists who admonish us to regulate the technology (especially through the states) before it’s too late. And finally, accept the wisdom of this premise:
“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”
We must press America’s leadership to consider the ethical, moral and practical implications of their actions. Responsible decision-making involves more than just our capabilities--it includes as well the broader consequences and implications of one’s choices in bringing those abilities to bear--on the rest of America.
The proverbial clock is ticking.
If the left prevails, agentic AI becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy promoting dependency, surveillance culture and indoctrination--America and Canada edge closer to becoming “welfare states.” They cease to be what they have always stood for, and citizens of both countries fought and died to defend--freedom of choice rather than “dependency driven equality.” Not only can we not let this happen--we can prevent it--if we prevail in the narrative war for the heart and conscience of both America and Canada.
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