How difficult is it to encounter a piece of technology that does not seem to utilize artificial intelligence today? One might say that it's impossible, given that it is ingrained into nearly every appliance, application, and even ordering service today. But recently, quite the shocking event has occurred. President Donald J. Trump has officially designated the technology as a military force.
AI as a TOOL OF NATIONAL SECURITY
It was October 4th that the President of the United States of America decided to create a "superintelligence force" to coordinate AI policy for the federal government. This "SIF" was designed as an interagency body, and is to be conducted by the Director of National Intelligence, Jay Clayton.
Now, to some, this may warrant a reaction of shock. But I feel that to most, it was completely expected and quite the the patent decision to take with such a volatile technology. Ever since the Markov model precursors of the early 20th century, and the innovation of the AI chatbot in the 1960's, (ELIZA was the first AI chatbot, created in MIT in 1966) humanity has been in an increasingly hostile and competitive rat race to apply this "Artificial Intelligence" into every aspect of one's life. This competition has now gone so far that global superpowers (including the United States itself) have begun to allow artificial intelligence to participate in intelligence gathering, and make semi-autonomous executive decisions for small portions of the military.
However, a ubiquitous issue arises from the transition of human-driven systems to more AI involved ones within the framework of the armed forces. For example, the recent incident involving the Chinese tanker in the Middle East. A United States intelligence analyst had, of course rather foolishly, decided to run some images that had been gathered through an AI to more "efficiently" comb some intelligence data. Of course this AI chatbot misinterpreted the tanker as a secretive ship from China involved in a sort of strategic nuclear weapons transfer operation, which was completely false. That same analyst then packaged the bot's findings into an intelligence report which made it far enough up the chain of command to have operatives readied and transport aircraft scrambled for an operation. This was narrowly avoided via a last minute check-in of the findings.
To put one's entire trust in the integrity of an artificial intelligence is outright absurd. It is inevitable that artificial intelligence will be applied within the sphere of national security. Though, the rate and volume at which the United States Armed Forces are attempting to implement such a currently faulty technology into almost every matter of national defense is wholly ill-advised and among the most injudicious decisions to have even been considered in the modern day. In history, even!
AI as a tool in civil spheres
"Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question."
That was a quote from Samuel Butler's satirical novel, Erewhon.
While this is not to serve as some sort of silly hint toward my own belief in any particular "AI doomsday", it does serve as a caution to any future development and implementation of artificial intelligence in any and all spheres of existence. The bourgeois investors and the business owning developers see not the implications of developing such a great technology at such a great speed, they see within this great myriad of price signals, of demand and supply, and of "incentive to create profit" a world of gold and happiness for themselves and themselves only.
Though one may not be able to accurately predict the direction in which current artificial intelligence development is heading, it would be hoped for that this individual has any amount of common sense in those thoughts of what may happen if such a technology spirals out of our human control. The truth is, nonetheless, that if this intelligent technology becomes too greatly developed, so as to be worked on with the whole lives of human beings, to develop such a great creation so as to go beyond the conscious ability of it's own human creators, and to even go as far as to mock God Himself with an "intelligent creation of artificially living being", then collective humanity risks a great wrath from any and every source of reality.
To repeat: This is not to make the statement that the third position is against the development of artificial intelligence. In fact, the third position outright endorses the development of such an amazing technology. But what must be recognized as a simple fact, presents itself to be that artificial intelligence has the capacity to become a risky and dangerous technology if not treated with the proper caution and circumspection that such a development should, by all means, certainly have the enjoyment of being treated with.
To give artificial intelligence the proper means of further development, with the wishes of human safety and national development in mind, the capitalist system that surrounds its current development must be dismantled.
The executives that presently have complete control over AI's development care not for human safety or national development, but by instinct, what makes them the most money. This philosophy is fundamentally incompatible with a technology that should be used for the furthering of the position of the state and it's national proletariat. To empower the state, a technology has to serve the state, not a business owner.
Capitalism and ai - the correlation
The very cardinal bearings, directions of capitalism that persist into an inevitable perpetuity do not outright sanction, nor do they even indirectly sanction the existence of a positive reciprocity in relation to the development of national economic sectors, and the development of a citizen's welfare. The natural thirst for anything that produces a marginal profit, even if it demands the sacrifice of the quality of a product that exists to serve the state, persists like a festering, gangrenous wound in the hearts and souls of the bourgeoisie.
Does it even exist, as a capability in the hearts of the rich owners, to fathom a reality where they must be subservient to a state, in it's entirety? Do the individuals who wish all power for themselves, and all riches to their bank accounts, have it within them to serve the nation with absolute, unwavering loyalty, even when it inexorably boils down to them and their businesses being disabled from free existence entirely, and the extension of their own reality being forged into one of inescapable obsequiousness?
The answer is quite obvious. They do not. If made to exist solely for the development of the state, and with no development of their own personal profit, then the bourgeoisie will take every chance that they are given, every fraction of any sort of capacity to subvert the wishes of the state, and use it.
This quite apparently applies to the development of artificial intelligence as well. The industry follows suit in the natural order of all others. The rich owners do not want to be completely subservient to state development. They want their supercars, and their mansions, and their super-yachts; The bourgeoisie are only at the top of their respective pecking orders because of their limitless ambition for petty self-indulgent opulence, and narcissistic material wealth. Though all industries truly follow in this format, one point must be emphasized. An industry as threatening to national security and as dangerous to the general populace as the artificial intelligence industry must be more servile to the state than any other industry concerning the economy.
Though nationalization of all industry is inevitable, artificial intelligence, as with the military industries and the general heavy industry, must be treated with due rapidity according to their importance regarding the security of the very state itself.
Lastly, one must recognize, we do not live in a "capitalist utopia", for such a statement is already an oxymoron. The indoctrinated neoliberals of this world may come to perceive of this current international model as one resulting in preordained world peace. But such an assertion is far from true. No, it is not that as capitalists, we may be less likely to anger one another to the point of global warfare, not excluding the possibility of nuclear weapons usage. But it is exactly as capitalists that our respective nations will be so utterly and completely distracted by profiteering off of absolutely everything and anything, that hostilities will ineluctably result in global nuclear warfare so as to demand a final, uni-polar monopoly of the global economy to, perchance, generate a few more greenbacks in profit.
Authored by,
SITPC Minister of Information and Agitprop, Jefferson (Too the Chairman of the Proletarian Liberation Party of Patriots)