The world can go in one of two directions with AI. Either it goes down the path of regulation, which would be under the guise of public safety, or it will go down the path of deregulation which would focus on keeping AI control accessible to all.
I think most of us have a love hate relationship with AI. It’s a powerful tool that we all use, yet at the same time it has a soulless dystopian feel to it and is actively ruining a lot of creative industries. Writing obviously, art, memes and pictures in general, and also soon movies and shows. People have given it an accurate name, AI slop, because most of it is generic, repetitive and soulless.
But regulation of AI in order to combat this issue would be worse than any problems it is currently creating.
In the future, most likely the very near future, about 99.9% of everything we see online will be AI. This trend is unstoppable and once it gets to the stage where it is the vast majority of content, people will begin to call for it’s regulation. Which is either about now or very soon to start.
But if it gets regulated it will essentially mean only the government and high tech institutions will have access to it and the average person won’t. Even if it makes life less irritating, or results in less fake videos of people ect, life will become that much more dangerous for the average person.
If time passes whilst AI is regulated, then people will either not fully grasp or simply not be able to tell anymore what is real and what is not. Especially if the government has deemed fake videos or something like that to be illegal.
Because if people assume that AI can’t be in their social space, then people will never figure out when something was made by AI because they are not able to adjust to the nuanced rapid advances in it.
Social media is the best example of all this because it is something everyone can grasp, but the real power of the tool lies in the background, in creating new programs and financial tools etc. The plumbing of all tech. The actual creation of what in the future will be entire industries. Everything will run on AI. All finance. All programs. Anything and everything digital, and processes that control non digital things.
To stop a runaway government induced collapse, the solution is to make sure that AI is heavily deregulated and as open to the public as possible so that they get used to it and understand it.
This doesn’t mean that we have to look at AI slop all day, but we should have the ability to do so. I predict that very soon someone will make a social media site that is based on the idea of having no AI content. This isnt the same as the regulation that I’m talking about, as that is a personal choice thing, not a top down rule enforced on everyone.
All tools should be made available to anyone. Not manipulated by regulation. Instead there should be a strong push for deregulation. Similar to a libertarians approach to markets. Laissez faire AI.
The way the world is advancing right now, it is quite clear that some sort of global technocracy will form. It could be done in a Fabian Globalist style way, where it is blatantly clear that there will be a controlling class, the world government, that will control a slave class of a mixed world people, a lot like in Brave New World or the even worse case scenario in my book The Theory of Devolution.
Or the world could go down a more imperialistic technocracy route like what is being hinted right now in the US, where a similar controlling elite technocracy is being presented but that has more of a focus on free speech and freedom in general for the populace, whether that style will last or not we’ll have to see. Could also easily just be a Hegelian dialectic style situation with both the US and the rest of the West’s leadership being the same group.
But without total freedom to use and adapt to AI technology the enslavement of humanity is basically inevitable.
Regulation is already beginning in the UK and Australia, with both governments considering rules on deepfake imagery, such as Prime Ministers being put into bikinis etc which people have a laugh at.
But this is clearly the first step towards opening the flood gates on regulation. Regulation will simply mean the populace cannot use AI to its fullest potential. It doesn’t stop AI programs from being able to do what is being regulated. So only the government, large institutions and criminals will be able to use and develop AI.
AI is the most powerful thing humanity has ever created, I believe it is much more powerful than the nuclear bomb. And it develops incredibly fast. Exponentially fast. It can do much more than a human ever could. The only way to go forward in this world without it devolving into a dystopian hellhole is to not let the governments be the ones to control it.
In my book I made sure, although most things were never explained, that the real power was clearly actioned by the AI programs but that their actions weren’t decided by them, although they never fully realised this, especially in Simurgh’s case, and that the problem for the devolving world was never that the AI went rogue and turned bad, but that it did the opposite and stayed as a loyal program working for the government until the total collapse of civilisation. Meaning it was the governments decadence and mistreatment of their subjects that destroyed society and AI was simply always a totally regulated tool tied to the government.
And so for us to avoid a worst case scenario like this normal people have to adapt to every advancement as much as possible, and not support government regulation.
AI is like a giant beast, and we have to know what it looks like, how it moves, what it does, where it’s going, why it’s going there etc. To me, in a more mystical sense, it’s like our ancient past coming back, mirrored.
The beast our ancestors in the forests developed such a fear and fascination for, some sort of lion or large wolf, that used to hunt us, until we finally mastered it. That is what this reminds me of. We have to adapt to it and learn from it or it will destroy us. It’s not destined to destroy us, but if we use it in the wrong way it will. And the wrong use is exclusive government use and being kept out of the hands of civilians.
Regulation of AI will essentially destroy the world. Because the people at the top will think they’re geniuses and have all the control and riches that they want, but when they become decadent and lazy, which they will, AI will still be in their hands and the masses will have no knowledge of what it truly is or how to use it.
I don’t believe, like they show in the movies, that AI is going to rise up and take over the world. But it’s incorrect use will destroy the world, keyword here is use, because it will always be a tool. We should be trying to scale alongside with it. If a future civilisation that has a monopoly on AI that’s beyond anything we can comprehend suddenly collapses internally, then the entirety of civilisation will collapse alongside it because the people will not have been adapting to all the changes because they’ll be in their pods with their happy juices and VR etc. Already many leftists today don’t understand that you need farmers to farm the land in order to get food in the stores. It’s funny at the moment but that will be universal in society if the world goes fully Fabian Globalist totalitarianism, which is the current trend.
Regulation of AI will literally destroy civilisation and we’ll eventually be sent back to the stone age, or worse, the end of the world. We all have to adapt to it, learn alongside it, all understand it as much as possible. If we start banning things then those things will still be there, it’s just that only governments, large corporations and criminals will be using it. That is how all regulation for any product or situation has always worked. Guns are the perfect example.
Adapt and get used to the things we don’t like about AI, never ban anything, just understand that the world is different now whether we like it or not. Don’t hide from the beast and hope it goes away because it won’t. We have to evolve alongside it or perish.
Alex James.
More like this, click the hyperlink:
My book, The Theory of Devolution. About a future one world government that controls everything with AI but then collapses internally.
Articles on essentially the same topic, technology category
A short fictional article that covers what it could be like in the future where AI is everywhere and government control is extreme.
Another short fictional article, this one on 15 minute cities, exploring how reality can be distorted through heavy government regulation and control coupled with restricted movement.