The union of the two towers—how to build a government out of ai

The Watercooler
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A new essay on AI, which attempts to explain how AI is taking over government, through the union of the two towers: the tech oligarchs and the crooks. It’s probably my darkest essay yet, which, well, seems timely.

They tell us the future belongs to the machines.

What they don’t tell us is that the machines answer not to the common good, to reason, or to humanity. They answer only to the wills of their masters. Governance by AI means governance by tech oligarchs. We are sleep-walking into a future of global machine totalitarianism, oohing and aahing over their toys as their dreams play out on the lids of our own serenely closed eyes.

Can we stop it? For a little while, perhaps. So long as governments remain in the hands of humans, we can pass our own laws. The thing about machines, you can turn them off. Every day that passes, I look at the trees and breathe in the air, and a full-on Butlerian Jihad grows more appealing.

Let us not make machines in the likeness of a human mind.

https://lokanta.github.io/2024/11/25/ai-government/

Collected essays on AI:

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The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.
~ The Grapes of Wrath

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In a hopeful sign, 38 people just told the co-president that he cannot stiff-arm them so expediently through the magic of serial X tirades. The blatant exposure of his ulterior motives is in plain view.

So, frequently now I’m appreciating the Buddha’s teaching to the Devas, in the Mangala Sutta, where, in response to their request for What Constitutes the Highest Blessing, he first goes here:

> Asevanā ca bālānaṁ,
> paṇḍitānañca sevanā

Maybe people can get motivated through community. The AI resisters must lead those communities. They need to be recognized so that people know how to find them.

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That passage from Grapes of Wrath is awesome! It is an issue we seem to run into again and again in our institutions and technologies. Thank you for sharing, Bhante.

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