Jack Preston King
Jul 30, 2017 · 1 min read

the decision was long since made to automate everything and implement AI as the means of administration by a series of unregulated corporations. This is being done by Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Tesla, Ford, etc.

This is perhaps the most concrete place at which I take exception to the whole AI as world savior scenario. There is a clear implication in the quote above that Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Tesla, Ford, etc are somehow conspiring together to save the world from the foibles of dumb Humanity by automating everything and implementing AI as a means of administration on our behalf. That’s downright mythological. It’s religious language, really. From where I sit, the aforementioned companies appear, day in and day out, to be competing with one another to make as much money as possible, and to control as much of everything as they can for their own Capitalist ends, humanity be damned. I do not see a benevolent hand anywhere in the Capitalist corporate sphere. If on some level those businesses are in fact colluding to put AI in charge of global society, it seems much more likely to me that their goal would be the enslavement of humanity rather than its salvation. You often and rightly, IMO, lambast late stage Capitalism as a force destroying society and the environment. How, then, can you look to “Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Tesla, Ford, etc” for salvation?

    Jack Preston King

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