Some Perspectives On The Future Of Technology, Business, Media And Politics

[askdfjnak]

I don’t really know how to begin this because everything is connected so I’ll just jump in here:

 

 

- Artificial intelligence is moving outside of the realm of science fiction into our everyday lives. Just because we don’t see humanoid androids walking around doesn’t mean that technology is still rudimentary. Machines have already long surpassed human ability in specific domains.  

-AI’s are now able to perform creative tasks such as creative writing and music composition on top of mechanical and mental labour.

-We don’t need to wait for “true” artificial intelligence to be concerned about the impacts that these technologies are going to have on our lives. Consider self-driving cars and general machine learning. The threshold for a machines ability to replace human labour in domains such as transport are incredibly low.

 

 

- Huge portions of the work force could be made redundant in the next 2-3 decades, and this is going to have many knock-on effects for the rest of the employment industry. I can imagine competition for remaining jobs and industries is going to soar so even if you have a niche job/business that you don’t believe is going to be affected you will probably be made redundant too.

- There will be an increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor making it harder for people to move out of their social class. If you think that technology gives lower classes of people more power, consider how algorithms that track your internet usage and content could be used to your detriment.

 

 

- Employment and entitlement are just stories that we believe on a collective level, as is beautifully demonstrated by the village metaphor he uses.

 

 

 

- The only way we are going to be able to resolve the issues that we are bound to face peacefully is to change our stories. That could be wishful thinking, though.

 

-Over the past year I have made 3 separate google accounts and have embodied a different persona when I use each of them to get a feeling for how search algorithms function to keep you in your bubble of information; As the gravity of your search history expands the harder and harder it becomes for you to access new domains of information, it got to the point where I would enter the exact same search terms into google or YouTube and end up with completely different pages and videos that google thought “I” should watch based on my search history and the person google thought I was.

- Even if our content isn’t being tampered with by vested interests, our own tendency to seek out information that maintains our perspectives and opinions will work against us as we move into the future. As a collective we have perspectives that we will not break out of easily. Algorithms will list content purely based on public engagement.

 

 

 

 

- The media, business, politicians and the public are the major stakeholders connected by the economy. These stakeholders are inseparable, each is dependent on the others. AI is going to radically impact these domains, regardless of ideals, political positions or public opinion.

 

 

 

 

- Consider how topics trend in favour of spectacle and not in favour of core political issues, skewing public engagement away from core issues into the spectacle of politics. This could be worsened by an increasingly technologically dependant society where algorithms match content based on popularity rather than accuracy or relevance. i.e. the public will be subject to more and more tabloid realism.

 

 

 

 

-Consider the connection between business and the political sphere. As public engagement decreases and people’s attention is misdirected business and politicians will be able to get away with sketchier policies and sketchier economic stories. Democracy will still exist but it will be nothing more than a story.

 

 

 

 

-When all our jobs have been taken by AI’s, the government will have less interest in maintaining it’s citizens to be productive members of society and produce treasure. There will be less need for spending on healthcare and education and maintaining infrastructure.

 
- Meanwhile corporations will boom as their products become increasingly automated and efficient and they will be able to have a heavier and heavier impact on policy.

-Democratic leaders will require fewer and fewer keys to power and will have narrower sources of treasure setting up the perfect conditions for global dictatorships while the dishevelled public will be spending their days arguing over which politician or commentator hurt their feeling on the morning news, delivered to them by an AI that thought it was the most relevant content to serve up.

 

I have only just started to dip my toes into the clusterfuck that is political philosophy, futurism, geopolitics and economics, but I really want to learn about these things and would appreciate all opinions about similar topics.

It is really complicated, but that is no excuse for ignorance.

[Dragallur]

@Marc Schinkel Great post Marc! 

I am going to create ectra google account I guess!

Also, check out singluarity in artificial intelligence, for example the work of Eliezer Yudkowski (he is really good rationalist)

Check out Age of Em - book. You can hear about it on Baeysian Conspiracy podcast in one of their interviews.

This is really interesting subject, I am looking forward to your next post.

I can see you follow CGP Grey too

[Steph1988]

Interesting

i like to add this one 

 

[askdfjnak]

@Dragallur Thanks, will do.  

@Steph1988  Nice one.
Yeah realizing that money doesn't exist was a HUGE watershed moment for me. It's like how language is an illusory substrate that the ego can swim in on an individual level money is the language of the cultural ego. Money and value are two different things. 

Yes, in order for businesses to make money the population needs money to spend on the goods that have been produced by the automation that has put them out of work.
They currently get this in the form of credit that banks pull out of thin air and loan to them at a set interest rate, which is why people are working and consuming goods and in debt all at the same time.

This system also allows people higher up the chain of circulation to purchase goods at a lower price than the general population when new money is printed. (see the documentary below at 19:40)
I grew up in Zimbabwe and I know that it's a first class shit hole now. I can see how the exact same mechanism that destroyed Zimbabwe is now seeping into to the democratic systems of the first world and it scares me. It's just moving slower because people are educated and comfortable so the heat has to be turned up slowly.

I wanted to add a bit on the potential for crypto-currency to change our current methods of exchange because they are quantifiable unique bits of information that overcome many of the previous challenges of gold but it would have made things too complicated I think.

This documentary is really insightful if you have the time to watch it.
I like the analysis of the life cycle of empires and the reference to the things we see happening today right at the beginning:
 

 

[Nahm]

@Marc Schinkel My apologies if I've missed it, but, what is your better idea? I want to hear that and get behind it.

[jse]

12 hours ago, Marc Schinkel said:

I grew up in Zimbabwe and I know that it's a first class shit hole now.

Related -  I have one of these on my desk:

Note that this bill was the equivalent of something like a Septillion, after Zimbabwe removed 12 or so zeroes from their failed currency.

[askdfjnak]

@jse Score.
How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?

@Nahm I didn't pose any solutions, I didn't even really mean to imply a problem. These are just things that interest me and I want to learn more about.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Marc Schinkel

[Steph1988]

@Marc Schinkel When u talk about this stuff lots of people intermediately get kinda offended, do not want to think about it and ask of you the big solution to this i find that such BS.

First off all you can be just interested in the topics secondly u thinking about it alone helps because u learn and we can have only democracy with a well educated and aware population.

Pointing out problems in itself is a solution if no one had things to work on and everything was perfect we would not come to this forum probably.

Some people expect that after having long thought about some problem and contemplated it and read about it for years u have some kind of solution the truth is they are indifferent to it all and that is their good right but it is kinda annoying to hear such lazy remarks.

I say it is a stitch by stitch process but it starts with education,awareness and contemplation.

This video from leo works at both a personal level and on the collective level i think.

Had to get that minor annoyance off my chest keep up the good work!@Nahm ( it is a very good question of course but unlike you maybe most people ask this question with different intentions the question just reminded me off it ) 

[jse]

1 hour ago, Marc Schinkel said:

@jse Score.
How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?

@Marc Schinkel , I think that you may be confusing me for the lovely girl in my profile pic. 

[askdfjnak]

On 26/02/2017 at 2:06 AM, Nahm said:

@Marc Schinkel My apologies if I've missed it, but, what is your better idea? I want to hear that and get behind it.

After having thought about it for a little while the solution is quite obvious.

The fundamental problem is that we have a voracious appetite for DOING and not BEING.

This manifests itself into the core economic story that we tell ourselves. We have purpose in DOING our work because we NEED to work to survive and cater to our list of personal neurosis and identities in the spare time that remains after our 9-5s, or whenever we come in from the office of our private businesses.

The rise in technology has seen a rise in productivity and abundance but the value of that has been taken away from the colllective and pooled into the hands of few. I don't think it's malicious intent on the part of the wealthy, so much as it is necessary to maintain order in society.

Can you imagine what would happen if that wealth was re-injected into our systems of exchange?

We are perfectly capable of giving everybody handouts, and/or increasing minimum wages to ridiculously high levels.
We are perfectly capable of providing more than enough for everybody.
It's ironic that doing so would probably increase our collective wealth further (see link).

But we don't really want that.

If we didn't have didn't have corporate magnates and dictators and politicians and a fraudulent banking system and journalism and if we didn't have terrorism and if we didn't have wars and international conflicts and if we didn't have to spend the majority of our time in jobs that we hated and if we had healthcare and education and safe homes and food and water. WHAT THE FUCK WOULD THERE BE LEFT TO DO!?

We could could watch a few netflix series, but that would get boring. After that, what?

Nothing.

We would have to start being.

And that is far more terrifying than anything listed above.
 

 

[Nahm]

My bad. I meant what are you going to do?

[askdfjnak]

 

@Nahm  I appreciate the covert intentions behind your questions. I’m well aware that there is much less to existence than all this.

There is also much less to existence than the law of attraction and much more to be discovered and experienced than positive emotions and the fulfilment of desire.

Heads up.

 

To answer your question precisely.

What am I going to do?
I am going to continue asking questions, reading responses and developing my understanding of these issues.

[Nahm]

@Marc Schinkel That's great and thank you.  I was coming from a little different place. Not sure if that's you're real picture, but I get the impression that it is and that you are extremely intelligent for your age. Another assumption, but I bet that comes from having had an open mind and always learning. I was really wondering how you were going to apply all that awesomeness. I honestly have a feeling, when I read your words, that you're going to do something really awesome that will change lives. I'm not sure what law of attraction has to do with it, unless you mean that you are experiencing what you're looking for. I would suggest that is just the uncertainty principle playing out vs loa. Maybe they're the same, i don't know. It's all preference anyways. It's what we do that matters to us each. You are really talented with writing and speaking. You could do great things. You seem to have more than ample clarity already. I think you're ready to really do something big. 

[askdfjnak]

@Nahm I appreciate the flattery, but I'm not that young and I'm not that smart  

I just listen to smart people in the hopes that some of it will seep through via osmosis. < I learned this word from a smart person.

Einstein and Saduguru both say that intelligence is being able to take the complex and distill it into simplicity, not the other way around.

Lao Tzu said that "All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small"

I'm trying to embody these insights and it seems to be working judging by your comment!

Edited March 2, 2017 by Marc Schinkel