Big tech is bad. Big AI will only get worse

tech giants Microsoft and Alphabet/Google dominate the artificial intelligence that could dominate our future. The two professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson are the authors of «Power and Progress: Our 1 Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity«. The two tech giants have a huge lead in shaping our future, which the Artificial Intelligence will potentially dominate in the future.

These are not good news. History has shown us that when a few are able to disseminate the information, political and economic oppression ensue. If we don't intervene, history will repeat itself. In just a few short months, Microsoft has smashed speed records and intends to launch ChatGPT, a form of generative artificial intelligence, Invest $10 billion.

>In May, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet/Google, a number of AI tools – for emails, spreadsheets and writing of all kinds, among other things. There is already debate as to whether Meta (formerly Facebook) will accelerate the concentration process with the decision to release its AI computer code. The fact remains that all competitors from Alphabet and Microsoft stay far behind.

These corporations are trying to overtake each other without this development being regulated. This should worry us all all the more as artificial intelligence can severely impact jobs, privacy and cybersecurity. An uncontrolled arms race rarely ends well. History has shown time and time again that control over information is critical to who has the power and what they can do with it. At the beginning of Script in ancient Mesopotamia most scribes were the sons of elite families, largely because education was expensive. In the medieval Europe members of the clergy and nobility were far more likely to be literate than the common people, and they used this advantage to enhance their social position and legitimacy. The literacy rate rose with industrialization, although those who decided what was printed in the newspapers and what people were allowed to say on the radio and later on television very powerful were.

But with the advancement of scientific knowledge and the spread of telecommunications came a time when there were a multitude of sources of information and many competing ways of obtaining facts or information. Knowledge and draw conclusions. Access to facts about the outside world weakened the Soviet Union’s control over Poland, Hungary, East Germany and the rest of its former sphere of influence and ultimately contributed to to their disintegration.

From the 1990s onwards, the Internet offered even cheaper ways of expressing opinions. But over time, the communication channels became more concentrated in few hands, including Facebook, whose algorithm the political polarization exacerbated and, in some well-documented cases, fueled ethnic hatred. In totalitarian regimes such as China, the same technologies have become the tools of a comprehensive control 

With the advent of artificial intelligence, we are in the process of regressing even further. This is partly due to the way Technology to do. Rather than checking multiple sources, people are increasingly relying on nascent technology to get a single, supposedly definitive answer to questions. It is not easy to access the footnotes or links that would allow users to explore the underlying sources. This new technology is in the hands of two companies whose philosophical roots lie in the term "machine intelligence," which refers to the ability of computers to outperform humans at certain tasks. Deep Mind, a company now owned by Google, is proud to to develop algorithms, which human experts can beat at games like chess and Go.

This philosophy was, of course, reinforced by a new (bad) economic idea that says the sole aim of corporations should be to maximize shareholder wealth in the short run. Taken together, these ideas cement the notion that the most productive applications of AI should replace humans. The abolition of food vendors in favor of self-service checkouts, for example, only helps little to productivity of those who remain employed and also upsets many customers.

We believe the artificial intelligence revolution could make even the dire prophecies made by Karl Marx more than a century ago come true. The German philosopher was convinced that capitalism was inherently Monopoly ownership of the «means of production» and that oligarchs would use their economic clout to run the political system and keep workers poor. Fortunately, Marx was wrong about the 19th-century industrial age in which he lived. Industries sprang up much faster than he expected. New companies kept bringing them economic power structure mixed up.

Social counterforces developed in the form of trade unions and genuine political representation for broad sections of the Society. And governments developed the ability to regulate industrial excesses. The result was more competition, higher wages and more robust democracies. Today, these countervailing forces either do not exist or are greatly weakened. Generative AI requires much larger investments than textile factories and steel mills. For this reason, most AI projects belong to Microsoft, with a market capitalization of $2,4 trillion, and A with a market cap of $1,6 trillion.

At the same time, forces like that Unions weakened by 40 years of deregulation ideology (Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, two Bushes and even Bill Clinton). The US government is no longer able to stop this development. Because the extreme polarization and fear of killing the golden goose or undermining national security mean that most members of Congress prefer to look the other way. In order to prevent data monopolies from ruining our lives, we must mobilize an effective countervailing force – and quickly.

The US Congress must property rights of individuals prevail on the underlying data on which the AI ​​systems are based. If Big AI wants to use our data, we want something in return: You have to increase the actual productivity of the employees. What we need is not machine intelligence, but "machine utility," which uses the power of computers to augment human capabilities. People's productivity can be increased in a meaningful way by empowering employees to have a say in the production process. This would also strengthen the social forces that can stand up to the big tech companies. New approaches to technology would also be needed to break the monopoly of the big AI players.

We need regulation that protects privacy and opposes surveillance capitalism That is, against the ubiquitous use of technology to monitor our behavior – including “acceptable” behavior” as defined by employers and the police, and as the police interpret the law. The AI ​​can now evaluate all of this in real time. Finally, we need progressive corporate taxes, so that if corporations make more profits in dollar terms, the tax rates are higher. An adapted tax system would pressure from shareholders on the tech titans to split up to lower their effective tax rate.

More competition would lead to a diversity of ideas and more opportunities to develop a people-friendly direction for digital technologies. If these companies choose to remain giants, the increased tax on their profits can fund public goods - particularly education - that help people to cope with the new technologies and support a more humane orientation of technology, work and democracy. Our future should not lie in the hands of two powerful corporations building ever-larger global empires by using our collective data with no qualms or compensation.

Read article at Infosperber