Why does technology favor tyranny?

The showing of liberal democracies relates to ideals of freedom and equality, which may appear to be in the first self-understanding and irreversible view. But these ideals are far more fragile than we believe. Their success in the 20th century depended on unique technological conditions that can be witnessed as fleeting.

In the second decade of the 20th century, liberalisation has begun to lose its credibility. The causes of this political change are complex, but they appear to be interrelated with current technological developments. Technology that favours democracy is changing, and the way artificial intelligence develops can change further.

In such conditions, liberal democracy and free market economy can become outdated.

In no detail can ordinary people understand artificial intelligence and biotechnology in any detail, but they may feel that the future is beyond them.

In the 20th century, the measures revolted against exploitation, and aimed to translate their vital role into the economy, into political power. The measures now fear that they are insignificant, and are aiming to use the remaining political power rapidly before it is too late. Brex and Donald Trump's growth can show a trajectory contrary to that of traditional socialist revolutions. Perhaps in the 20th century, populist revolts will not be organized against an economic elite that exploits people but against an economic elite that no longer needs them.

But this may be a losing battle. Revolutions in information technology and biotechnology are still in their early phase, and the extent at which they are responsible for the current liberalisation crisis is questionable. However, it is undeniably that in the coming decades, they will face mankind severely.

Fear of cars driving people out of the job market is not new, and in the past such fear has resulted in groundlessness. But artificial intelligence is different from old cars. In the past, cars competed with people mainly on manual skills. Now they're starting to compete with us on cognitive skills.

And we don't know about any kind of third skill beyond the manual and conjivatives in which people will always have an advantage. For at least a few decades, human intelligence is likely to exceed computer intelligence in numerous areas.

Consequently, as computers take on more and more cognitive jobs, new creative jobs will continue to appear for people. The chess world serves as an example of where things can go. For several years, after the IBM computer “Deep Blue” defeated Gary Kasparov in 1997, the human players still flourished; Artificial intelligence was used to train human skills, and teams made up of people and computers were proven more superior than computers playing alone.

In recent years, however, computers have become so good at chess that their human associates have lost their value and may soon become completely insignificant. What is happening with chess today can happen even with human cooperation with computers in public order, medicine, banking, and many other areas.

And while many people lose their economic value, very soon they can lose their political strength. The same technologies that can make billions of people economically insignificant can make monitoring and controlling easier.

He scares many people because they do not believe that it can always remain obedient. But there is no particular reason to believe that He will develop consciousness as much as he becomes intelligent. Instead, we should fear God, for we may always obey its human masters, and we will never rebel against them.

Look at the surveillance. Many countries worldwide, including some democracies, are engaged in building unprecedented surveillance systems. For example, Israel is a leader in the field of surveillance technology, and it has built the Western Coast model of a total surveillance regime.

Now, whenever Palestinians make a phone call, post something on Facebook, or travel from city to city, they are likely to be monitored by Israeli microphones, cameras, fears or spies. The algorithms analyse the collected data, helping Israeli security forces identify and neutralise those considered possible threats.

Palestinians may manage several towns and villages in the West Coast, but the Israelites command heaven, air waves, and cyberspace. Hence, very few Israelite soldiers effectively control about 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Coast.

What Palestinians are experiencing today in the West Coast may be just one initial example of what billions of people will eventually experience throughout the planet.

At the end of the 20th century, democracies usually exceeded dictatorships, as they were much more capable of processing information. We tend to think of the conflict between democracy and dictatorship as a conflict between two different ethical systems, but in fact it is a conflict between two different data processing systems.

Democracy distributes the power to process information and to make decisions among many people and institutions, while dictatorship focuses on information and power in a single country. Soon, however, Artificial Intelligence can tip the scales in the opposite direction.

Of course, new technologies will continue to appear, and some may encourage distribution, not concentration of information and power. “Blockchain”

and crypto-dollars, currently described as a possible counterweight to centralized power.

But she's still in her embryo stage, and we don't know if she can counter-balancing centralizing trends of artificial intelligence. Remember that even the internet at its beginnings was promoted as a <x0ilac“, which would keep people free of all centralized systems but is now willing to make the authority centralized more powerful than ever.

What should we do? To begin with, we need to set a much higher priority in understanding the mechanism of how the human mind functions, especially how our wisdom and compassion can be cultivated. If we invest too much on AI, and very little in the development of the human mind, the highly sophisticated artificial intelligence of computers, can only serve to enhance the natural stupidity of humans, and to foster our worst impulses, among them greed and hatred.

To avoid such an outcome, for every dollar and every minute that we invest in AI's improvement, it would be wise to invest in one dollar and one minute in human consciousness exploration and development. Meanwhile, more urgently, we need to fix data ownership.

In ancient times, the most important wealth was the earth; in modern times, machines and factories; while in the 20th century, data, and politics will be a struggle to control data flow. The race to collect data has begun, and is led by technology giants like Google and Facebook in the United States and Baidu and Tencent in China.

So far, many of these companies have been acting as “They draw our attention, giving us information, services, and free entertainment, and then turn our attention to advertisers.

However, their real business is not just selling advertising. Rather, by drawing our attention, they manage to collect large amounts of data on us, which are worth more than any commercial income. We're not clients, but their product. The common people will find it very difficult to resist this process.

Note: This article is adapted from the book of Juval Noah Harari, “21 Permissions for the XXI-518x1>.

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