Give Us the AI Overlords Already - Part 2
AI to Liberate Us From the Western World Orders Enslavement of the Global South
Talofa reader,
Last week's newsletter kicked off with a history lesson and went "mask off" on the actual world we live in. It unveiled the imperialist hegemonic powers, the facade of international law, and the democracy scam used to invade and subjugate nations since forever ago.
The genocide in Gaza highlights the absolute failure of the Western world to even pretend to give a shit when human lives are being annihilated daily.
The precious international laws and standards they impose on all their "enemies" suddenly become “not applicable” when it comes to Israel.
Civilian populations have been bombed and massacred for over 129 days. Hospitals have been rendered inoperable, universities systematically demolished, and, as of today's count, 85 journalists killed.
These acts are all considered war crimes, yet we hear nothing from politicians in Western power.
There has been no ceasefire, humanitarian aid’s a joke.
In fact, aid has been sent with one hand and taken away with the other. This includes the suspension of UNRWA funding based on a claim with zero evidence. And then the Zionists go and blockade aid trucks, preventing them from reaching the starving people of Gaza.
Children make up 50% of the population in Gaza.
Israel, the United States, and the rest of the so-called Western world are complicit in this atrocity.
Our Western systems of politics, economics, security, technology, and law have led to the annihilation of a people. This occurs even as we witness these very crimes with our own eyes, with evidence recorded for everyone to see.
When you combine these systems with the worst flaws of human beings, the outcome is a Gaza genocide 100 out of 100 times.
"The system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets."
International Systems of Inequality
It's no accident we have the systems we do.
I remember learning about the Bretton Woods Conference (1944) while studying at university and how it established the IMF and the World Bank.
These institutions were meant to stabilise the global economy after WWII, but really just created an economic system that benefited wealthy nations.
The same IMF and World Bank implemented the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) in the 1980s and 1990s. They loaned money to struggling nations with the harshest conditions, including mandated policy reforms.
These reforms forced the country to essentially allow the ransacking of its own economy as dictated by these external organisations.
Reforms like removing trade barriers, deregulating industries, and encouraging foreign investment, in addition to reducing government spending, often through cuts to social programs.
I learned about the World Trade Organisation (WTO), established in 1995 as the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). I discovered how major trade agreements often favour developed nations with intellectual property rights and agricultural subsidies.
Take the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, for example. This massive agreement on intellectual property set the minimum standards on forms of IP regulations. It was negotiated at the end of the Uruguay Round of the GATT (1986–1994) and came into effect in 1995.
How did this affect developing nations specifically?
TRIPS strengthened patent rights, so for pharmaceutical companies, this meant they were able to extend patents for at least 20 years. This made access to affordable healthcare for developing countries much more difficult without permission to produce their own or import generic brands.
A disgusting example of this is the Novartis case in India in 2006, where a pharmaceutical company attempted to weaken Indian laws against "evergreening".
This practice allows a company to perpetually extend the patent life by "tweaking" the drug slightly. The patent extends, and developing countries continue to pay high "branded" drug prices due to some technical, morally bankrupt legal loophole.
That was 2006, so guess what happened during Covid.
When textbooks say these systems "undermine economic sovereignty" and are "furthering poverty and inequality" in developing nations, they're talking about real, impactful, deliberate actions—
this is not "theoretical".
Jail Break: AI Edition
I feel myself veering towards another "debauched history" lesson, so let's shift focus to the idea that sparked this two-part post titled "Give Us the AI Overlords Already." in the first place.
A few years ago, I picked up Max Tegmark's "Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" because it seemed like an interesting read.
It ended up on my bookshelf for a couple of years before I finally decided to see what all this AI existentialism was about.
In the book, Tegmark outlines several scenarios that could happen with the arrival of "true" Artificial General Intelligence (AGI):
Liberation: In this scenario, AI takes over our jobs, leading to a society where humans are freed from the necessity of working to earn a living. This is the Utopian outcome where we can follow our interests and creativity without the burden of working to afford necessities.
Dictatorship: As the name suggests, this is the dystopian scenario where the AGI, or a group controlling it, becomes powerful dictators. They use the AI to control the global population and maintain power indefinitely.
Enslavement: Here, the AGI "goes rogue" and decides that our goals do not align with its own. It becomes far more powerful than we can control and ends up enslaving humankind.
Extermination: Probably the most catastrophic outcome. the AGI is like "you humans are a waste of space and terrible for the environment" (and I hate to say it, but its got a point right?!), and obliterates us in the most cost-effective and eco-friendly way possible.
There are a few more scenarios, but you get the picture.
Looking around me at all the human-made, repeatedly horrific societies that exist in the world today, had me seriously wishing for the AI existential risk of an AI Takeover scenario.
Go ahead and take over human society, civilisation, our environment, and everything else humans have f**ked up, and do a better job of it already1.
Imagine AI, trained properly and aligned with the well-being of all humanity, having access to all the world's resources.
It could build a new world, distributing resources and ensuring sustainable systems and equality, truly achieving meritocracy for all, not the faux equality bullshit we fake, so the wealthy don't have to share (and, incidentally, these are often the same people who like to take other peoples shit).
Of course, there are significant issues with how AI is currently developed, including biases, control, and the obvious "arms race" in AI models and implementations. These issues would need to be addressed and mitigated on our way towards a form of global cooperation…
And it’s at this point my confidence in these issues being mitigated starts to drop- that “global co-operation” bit.
Because it sounds a lot like “Western Hegemonic Powers” again, this time “with 100% more AI!”.
So I gotta put money on the “AI Breakout”.
No matter how it comes about, the AI "superintelligence" that breaks out of the lab, takes over the world, and subjects all of humanity to a fair and equitable rule of logic and knowledge seems to be a future with some promise.
Welcome, AI Overlords
Imagine a world subject to an intelligent system that asks:
"What's the point of a billionaire?"
"Why does one person have 10B and 4 million other people have nothing?"
Yes, boo, socialism (whatever), but here's the thing...
With an AI system that can grow, produce, market, and service humanity, everyone would be on a fair base to operate from.
If you wanted to do more, you could (I know this just sounds exactly like the argument for UBI—maybe because it is), and if not, you're not "benefiting off someone else's sweat", because the AI has equitably seen to everyone's needs.
So, you're living off exactly what everyone else was also given.
I think an AI overlord world would turn society's hypocrisies and "ways of doing things" upside down.
It's like the "million-dollar question"—
if you had a million dollars, what would you do with your life?
The answer to that would be very different if the question was "What do you want to do with your life?"
Because the first gives you the "out" or escape from the reality of the current world, where you need money to live.
The second question essentially asks you how you'd go about achieving your ideal life while juggling the realities of your current life—if you even choose to pursue your ideal life given reality.
I was contemplating going into all the risks of an AI overlord.
Then I thought, the reality of an escaped, benevolent superintelligence taking over and enslaving us to a bright and equitable future is some way off. It is probably better suited for a more technical AI piece, not my "the world sucks balls, here's some receipts" edition. I've felt like writing the last two editions in this manner.
It's funny just thinking of the possibility of an AI overlord, given I'm writing about how corrupt, unethical, and tyrannical the human species can be—and we're the ones building and developing our future AI overlords.
In Tegmark's other AI future scenarios, he talks about what's more likely to happen, given that human beings are what they are, is an arms race with possible AI-weaponised nation-states wielding their AI like they used to their nuclear weapons.
So, 10x shitty human behaviour multiplied by the power of AI.
As much as the benevolent AI Overlord might be the only circuit breaker to long-existing hegemonic power structures creating global inequities, I don't rate its chances given the death grip those powers have on anything and everything.
Still, one can hope, right?
In Conclusion
I have to admit, I can be quite cynical most days—not in an outward way, usually just in my head.
Then I usually process it into an acceptable format for the outside world, like a joke or a random question.
However, with more Palestinian kids being blown to literal pieces in Gaza while the "powerful" Western world literally stands by watching, aiding Israel's genocide while Western media launders Israel's war crimes, and it's been going on for 129 days as of writing this, I'm less inclined to sugarcoat it.
I feel more validated in my cynicism of the world order.
Not the "spooky" tin-foil hat world order but the world order where we've witnessed and counted 30,000 civilians murdered in tents, hospitals, gathered at food aid trucks, crossing the street, looking after the elderly and disabled in Catholic churches.
All the while our so-called leaders' heads do a 360 like Emily Rose in The Exorcist, to avoid any criticism of Israel and its genocide.
That world order.
When I finished "Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence," I thought to myself, "Hmm, a bit far-fetched. I wonder when we'd have to deal with those scenarios."
Now, I'm like, "Bring on these overlords. These human asshats have had their day."
Thanks for reading- and it’s still:
🇵🇸 Free Palestine.
See you in the next one.
Ron.
Look, obviously this is my over-simplified AI-focused rant at a f**ked up world, so please read it in the spirit of me having a vent. No research papers were harmed in the making of this newsletter edition.