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Understanding AI: People Are Spare Parts
Advanced artificial intelligences are already walking the earth: companies are robots. A company is an artificial intelligence, reprogrammed daily, a legal person, capable of learning, focused on survival. They do not have an off button.
Companies exhibit behaviour that is at the same time eerily human and shockingly antisocial. Many people depend directly or indirectly on them, but we have not taught companies always to meet human needs first. Could we have organised that differently? Or do companies and other intelligent robots always end up serving their own self-interest?
We do not need to speculate on how new artificial intelligences will behave in our society and how they will interact with humans, because that is taking place every day, right before our eyes. Not as a metaphor, but in reality. All we have to do is observe.
Imagine a giant robot full of living, breathing people. As body parts it has offices, laboratories, factories, boards of management and other departments. Other robots are sometimes competitors, sometimes allies, often both. The robot is still switched off. Now imagine that you are the one responsible for turning this robot on and giving it instructions as you see fit on how to act in society.
What would you tell the robot? On which assumptions would you base your…
