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Have you been getting the message that machines do it better? That AI is smarter than you? Have you been replaced at work by some sort of artificial intelligence program? Digital imperialism: The new colonialism is here. Now, you get to experience what plenty of Indigenous peoples have had to deal with over the journey. The clear and present inference that you are not good enough and too dumb to matter. Your culture thrown on the scrapheap of progress and advancement. This time, however, it is humanity per se copping it in the neck via a form of Social Darwinism. Only a small group of investors matter, those who are shareholders in the Big Tech companies overlording the rest of us.
AI & The Digital Imperialism Replacement Policy Of Business
We are witnessing this digital takeover and being told it will make the world a better place. Hundreds of millions of jobs will be lost to AI and there are no plans in place to compensate anyone. Still, we are being sold that this digital imperialism is a good thing. AI will be great for productivity, according to the economists, because it will reduce labour costs. Yes, your labour returns will be lost to you. What will you do instead to feed yourself and your family? Who will buy the goods and services when most folk have lost their careers? Will humanity sit idly by as its livelihood goes down the toilet? Will you be applauding the fact that Elon Musk is a trillionaire, when you are cleaning toilets for a living, if you are lucky to get a job at all?
Digital Imperialists Serving The Interests Of Big Tech
Technology has taken over the world, as we know it. Companies are competing as to who will take the spoils. AI expenditure is in the trillions. Data centres are being built around the globe to drive the AI boom. Meanwhile, humanity is in the gloom of doomerism, as billions of people try and work out what the fuck they are going to do? Governments focus on the spin put out by the Big Tech lobbyists. We hear that AI has worked out how to talk to whales! Wow, how fantastic. Could somebody super smart tell me how I am going to live a productive and meaningful life in an economy ruled by digital imperialism? Am I expected to operate in the shadows, cleaning up after the robots and their digital masters?
Is this the life we all signed up for?
The Future Of Humanity Is Not Rosy
Digital imperialism: The new colonialism. If you are not an investor in the Big Tech show you will become a second class citizen, if a citizen anymore at all. A serf, perhaps to technofeudal lords like Musk and Zuckerberg. The divide between super rich and poor continues to widen like the expanse in outer space. Profit seeking corporations rule the roost, everywhere you look. There is no overarching human intelligence guiding things. No, only AI devised by oligarchs to serve their greed. LLM word prompt programs have no real intelligence or sentience. It is all paper thin processing of words like a parrot understands the sounds of human voice to be mimicked. Impressive tricks designed to bowl over purchasing officers in companies.
Our futures are being decided by the segmented profit motives of companies in the AI arms race. The stock market darlings of the Nasdaq.
“The wealthiest 10% of American households own roughly 90% (specifically over 93%) of the U.S. stock market, according to data from the Federal Reserve. “
- (markets.businessinsider.com)
Who Bleeds? Not AI
Digital imperialism tells us that AI is smarter than you and me. That it will do a better job, more cheaply, than human labour and intelligence. This empty shell, they call artificial intelligence will lead the way. Who is our economy really about? Is it designed for a few investors or should it represent all of us fairly? Right now, it is the former not the latter. AI is already deciding who should get hired or fired at many places around the globe. AI is making crucial life and death decisions in wars. In battles involving Gaza, Lebanon and the United States in Iran. Who bleeds? AI doesn’t bleed. When you think of the Trump regime, it does not fill you full of confidence regarding leadership on this issue or any other. Trump attracts the worst of us. A conman at the helm of a superpower bereft of ideas about the sanctity of human life. A transactional real estate sales guy in way over his aged head. The future does not look rosy for humanity.
“These tools include the Gospel, an AI which automatically reviews surveillance data looking for buildings, equipment and people thought to belong to the enemy, and upon finding them, recommends bombing targets to a human analyst who may then decide whether to pass it along to the field. Another is Lavender…”
Are Billionaires A Good Thing?
“The rise of the billionaire class presents our societies with new challenging questions. Is it OK for private individuals to accumulate billions? Everyday people may think to themselves, I want to be able to accrue as much wealth as I can through my life, unhindered by governments. Unfortunately, the unfettered accumulation of vast wealth goes beyond simplistic equations like this. For instance, once a certain level of wealth is reached the growth of that wealth becomes exponential. Rich people make lots of money on the back of their ability to purchase assets that appreciate. Property, especially, residential property in places like Australia has been on a boom cycle of appreciation over the last 30 years. It has become the single greatest divider between rich and poor in this country.”
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of The Stoic Golfer; The AI Heresy; What Price Life?; America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump; and other titles. NOW AVAILABLE AT APPLE BOOKS & GOOGLE PLAY BOOKS. Google Play Books AUDIOBOOK
©MidasWord
The AI Heresy: A Betrayal of Humanity – PDF
How many AI bots does it take to change a light bulb?
