Support or Surveillance
How Will AI Be Used?
I have started imagining a world where every single child receives the support they need to thrive.
Historically, children of the upper classes received quite a bit of support, Churchill being an example.
But in Churchill’s day 98% of the children received little to no support at all. Even if they had devoted parents, the best of parents weren’t able to do much to shield their children from the ravages of the metaphorical wolves.
Historically, even when resources were plentiful, the bulk of the children of the world could not receive support because the logistics were just too damn difficult.
But with AI, we could build a system that reaches into every corner, every alley, every holler, every valley, every mountain, every desert, and into every human culture. We can begin to listen to and support the children (and adults).
This is “Support”. AI can and should be be used to give Support to every human (and eventually every animal as well, beginning (I recommend) with feral cats).
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The enemy of Support is Surveillance. As you reach down into every alley and valley there will be a chorus of naysayers warning about a “Surveillance Society.”
Yes. As we move to a society that Supports and listens, there is the danger of a Surveillance Society. It’s pretty much common sense some greedy bastard’s going to try whatever ruse he can to get himself a larger piece of the pie. And some Ideology will come along and commit atrocities in the name of their God.
But to not Support the children because of the dangers of Surveillance is like not growing food to solve a pest-control problem.
Right?!
There’s always the danger, in any human endeavor, that the Selfish will end up lording it over the Altruistic. This happens everyplace, everywhere. It happened recently with the Republican Party, and will happen again as AI develops thru AGI to ASI. Altruistic humans must be diligent.
Conclusion. To use the danger of the Surveillance State to halt AI development is wrong-headed. But the sane among us must be realistic about human nature and put necessary safeguards in place.
BTW, this AI endeavor will take massive amounts of “compute”. But when nuclear fusion finally arrives (it is less than 30 years away!) that will solve the “compute” problem. Also, there are these factory-built portable nuclear fission reactors (called Small Modular Reactors or SMRs) that will be coming on line in a few years. That will mitigate the Compute problem until the arrival of nuclear fusion. (So, yes, we are experiencing the last act in the era of fossil fuel primacy. But that’s another story.)
