Artificial Intelligence, All the Time?

A Conspiracy Theory

So what are Elon & Co. doing with all that data?   One thing I'm pretty sure of, and one I suspect. The first is using the data to train AI machines to do as much of the work as possible. That work done by humans, and that which occurs more automatically, but is supervised by humans.   He can't get rid of it all, despite trying real hard (!), but he could potentially get something like the classic 80/20 result, with 80% of many departments reassigned (to a bot). If he wires the data up properly, he could even run his machine learning programs on the data without even having to swipe it all, in which case it's legal. Then someone else can figure out the rest, and he can go back to playing rocket ships.

The basic thinking is that if the civil servant gets this particular function right 95% of the time, the AI machine can get it 98%.  That will apply to some functions, without a doubt.  The 2% of what remains of that function, you can get the remains of the civil service corps to work on.  It all sounds awful, and it is, but that's the logic. 

That second thing, though, my conjecture, is that he wants the data, for commercial purposes (100% illegal), but that he will disguise that when (not if) he downloads the data.  He will have to separate name from social, at a minimum, with the data attached to one or the other but not both.  The data mining itself and the machine learning do not need the name, and the social is of limited predictive value (though there is some intelligence in it). 

This is the tricky part:  the data can be made available more broadly, within the government or beyond, in this separated way--the user would have to use inference to make full use of it.  There could be an encrypted key to put the two together, or a series of them, and the US Government would have the exclusive access to this key stuff. 

 Except for the backdoors his coders put in to control the flow of money. And the copies he's made on the sly.

The New Era

It is incontrovertible that we have moved on from what history will eventually know as the Postwar Era.  We have reached the point by which many people might have no idea which "War" that phrase describes; a vanishing few have live memories of World War II; a few more recall the devastation out of which this period emerged.  The period we finished had two principal parts:  the Cold War, and the one which followed.  That one is over, but it doesn't really have a name yet, as it's too soon.  I would say--sincerely-- it was the Golden Age of the US, which would not please our current Presidential officeholder to hear, the next one being the Age of Golden Showers?

Now, though, the US wants to be just one among many--globally, and arguably, even in our half of the populated world, America (the Western Hemisphere).  Brazil, Mexico, Canada, the more successful parts of Central America and the Caribbean--they won't allow themselves to be dominated by the Monroe Doctrine, no more. In the Pacific, we strain to maintain; in Africa, the fastest-growing continent in population, we are losing the game fast.  

Culturally, too, we are entering a different direction than that which has been predominant.  The five nations which "won the war" and together formed the United Nations, giving themselves veto powers--the US, UK, France, Soviet Union (given to Russia), and China--have been among a handful of nations which have hosted international development--above all, in military might, but also in music, visual arts, and above all, rapid changes in technology.  Social development has been mostly continuous and slow --there have been real improvements in women's rights, in combating racial inequity in some nations, in feeding the world--but international political progress from the original UN Charter has been halting and is now being abandoned.  The clearest examples are global efforts to slow climate change or limit nuclear weapons.  Liberal democratic and social democratic values rise and fall in the esteem of the people, who are guided by the simple, sound principle that they would rather have their nations--always nations!--do what most want, rather than not (the way of kings and dictators who do what they want). Now, so many are feeling that they are not getting it. 

Nevertheless, so far, resistance in the 21st century has been reactive, generally nonviolent.  We don't see much new coming forward, politically.  Now come the destructive technology masters, culturally everywhere and now politically coming to dominate the US Federal government:  they are promising something new, in effect. 

We just need to cede.  

If only humans would give up this silly notion that they need to control things, we could operate much more efficiently!!  A good example is the driverless car situation, currently stalled.  There is a tipping point, I would guess it's about 75%, when the driverless cars will be able to stop worrying so much about the crazy things people-driven cars do and can just send signals back and forth from the vehicles on the net and things will work much better.  The cars will go much more efficiently and faster, without errors (except the occasional hallucination, I guess, but we're working on that!)--The tech bros.  

It is already a fact that first point of contact for consumers is going to be a chatbot, in most cases.  Voice response, sure, but the real question is whether you can get to a human and what you have to do to get to it.  I don't see that changing anytime soon, though the battlelines will shift back and forth at any particular entity, along with the location housing the humans or machines, and based on the needs of the shareholder, whoever that might be.  

So, that's when you're reaching out to them.  There's also the other side, though:  we call it marketing. What ad you're going to see when, what video or sound is in it when you get it, what email, what response to your polite inquiry.  

My request for legislation is a simple one:  in those cases, when what you are being presented is pure AI, there needs to be a bug that you can click that will tell you so--also what program or series of programs is being used, and that's that.  Or, if it is AI but there is a human behind it who has specifically approved or edited it, then that person is not wholly anonymous but can be accountable in some sense.  That's all I ask; then the consumer can judge the content knowing its provenance.