Artificial Intelligence and Satan are the two greatest enemies of the human race

Paul Craig Roberts

Many years ago in the 1950s, or perhaps it was the 1960s,  Mad Magazine painted a dystopian picture of the future in which AI had taken over life and produced everything everyone needed. Consequently, humans had nothing to do and no longer knew how anything worked or how to fix it.  And then one day AI had a problem and no one could fix it.  The world came to an end.

I have never understood why geeks and scientists think it is important or an accomplishment to take function away from humans and make them irrelevant. Karl Marx had a much more optimistic view of the future than today’s AI geeks permit.  Marx looked forward to a world in which the economy would be organized like a self-sufficient family farm or manor in which the output of the community was allocated and consumed without the need of markets and profit, thus bringing to an end the unemployment, inflation and disruption of life that unplanned market production caused. 

The result would free human energy from coping with needless hardships and unleash the potential of every human.  A person would be a worker in the morning, a philosopher after lunch, and a literary critic in the evening.  

Under AI humans have less and less to do.  I have pointed out for years that AI and robotics produce goods and services without human labor, but robots are not in the market purchasing goods and services.  As humans have no income from employment, how are the non-human produced goods and services distributed?

I said that humans would have to be given a basic income and that this would be the way equality is achieved.  As humans would not be producers, there is no reason for different incomes based on merit or luck. 

AI and robotics are the path to socialist equality.  But, of course, there is no equality as humans are subordinate to the machines. Moreover, what is the point of the humans? Why should AI produce for superfluous humans?

A day or two ago Elon Musk agreed with me when he said that a universal basic income would be necessary as AI and automation are replacing jobs, thus depriving humans of earning money from working.

Does humanity really want to be born into a world in which they are useless and unneeded, with no prospect of any higher development, with nothing to do but to spend their universal basic income for their needs or wants and watch disinformation on a video screen? In effect, AI means humans will be ruled by machines.

AI disconnects humans from one another. You can already see it.  We experience it every day. Consider for example “customer service.”  You are forced to confront robotic voices programmed to deal with a range of issues, seldom the one you are calling about.  Sometimes it is 48 hours before you can make contact with a human voice.  

The young are being taught to deal with AI, NOT WITH PEOPLE. Those born into AI will know nothing different, never having experienced contact with other humans as it is only a matter of time before schooling is accomplished online. We see it already, young people on dates sitting there scrolling their cell phones.  If they are connecting across the table it is with texts. People are forgetting how to talk to one another.

Human reproduction can become a problem.  Hologram induced masterbation can become more pleasing than actual sex as the beautiful partners are unreal and thus not problematic and weighted down with commitment.  This has already begun with dating sites that offer free sex.  Just call and arrange an anonymous sexual partner.

Today Americans are endeavoring with President Trump to beat back the Democrats’ attack on American principles.  The task of beating back AI’s attack on humanity awaits us. If we wait too long, we are lost.