Technology giants Microsoft and Alphabet/Google have a major stake in shaping our future, which may be dominated by AI. This is not good news. History has shown that when information distribution is left in the hands of a few, political and economic oppression results. Without intervention, this history will repeat itself.
In just a few months, Microsoft has broken records for speed establishing ChatGPT, a type of generative artificial intelligence that it plans to invest $10 billion in, as a household name. And last month, Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled a suite of AI tools that include emails, spreadsheets, and the creation of all kinds of text. There is debate as to whether Meta’s recent decision to release its AI computer code will accelerate its progress, but the reality is that Alphabet and Microsoft’s competitors are still far behind. .
Given the potential for AI to wreak havoc on jobs, privacy, and cybersecurity, the fact that these companies are trying to overtake each other in the absence of externally-imposed safeguards is even more for us. It should be cause for concern. An arms race without limits generally does not end well.
History has repeatedly proven that control of information is central to who has power and what they can do with it. When writing began in ancient Mesopotamia, most scribes were the sons of elite families, mainly because of the high cost of education. In Medieval Europe, clerics and nobles were much more likely to be literate than ordinary people, and used this advantage to strengthen their social status and legitimacy.
Literacy increased with industrialization, but the people who decided what newspapers printed and what people could say on radio and television had tremendous influence. However, the rise of scientific knowledge and the proliferation of telecommunications ushered in an era of multiple sources of information and many competing ways of processing facts and inferring impact. Access to facts about the outside world weakened, ultimately contributing to the destruction of Soviet control over Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and other former spheres of influence.
Since the 1990s, the Internet has provided an even lower-cost way to express opinions. But over time, channels of communication have become concentrated in a few hands, including Facebook, whose algorithms have exacerbated political polarization and, in some well-documented cases, flames of ethnic hatred. It also became aroused. In authoritarian regimes like China, the same technology has become a tool of totalitarian control.
With the advent of AI, we are about to step back even further. Part of it has to do with the nature of technology. People are increasingly relying on nascent technologies to possibly provide definitive answers instead of evaluating multiple sources of information. There is no easy way to access footnotes or links that allow users to explore the underlying source.
The technology is in the hands of two companies whose philosophical roots lie in the concept of “machine intelligence,” which emphasizes the ability of computers to surpass humans in certain activities. Deep Mind, a company now owned by Google, prides itself on developing algorithms that can beat human experts at games like chess and Go.
This philosophy was naturally amplified by the recent (bad) economic thinking that the sole purpose of a corporation should be to maximize short-term shareholder wealth. Combined, these ideas solidify the notion that the most productive applications of AI will replace humanity. For example, removing the grocery store clerks and introducing self-checkout kiosks has little impact on the productivity of the employees who remain employed, and can also cause a lot of customer frustration. But it also allows them to lay off workers and tip the balance of power even further in favor of management.
We believe the AI revolution could even bring about the dark prophecies envisioned by Karl Marx over a century ago. This German philosopher argued that capitalism would naturally result in monopoly ownership over the “means of production,” and that oligarchy would use its economic clout to run its political system and keep workers impoverished. I was sure.
Fortunately, Marx was wrong about the industrial era in which he lived in the 19th century. Industries were born much faster than he expected, and start-ups disrupted economic power structures. Opposing social powers have evolved in the form of trade unions and true political representation to broader segments of society. And governments have developed the ability to regulate industrial excesses. The result is more competition, higher wages and stronger democracy.
Today, these opposing forces are either non-existent or greatly weakened. Generative AI needs deeper funding than textile mills and steel mills. As a result, most of the obvious opportunities are already in the hands of Microsoft, which has a market cap of $2.4 trillion, and Alphabet, which has a market cap of $1.6 trillion.
At the same time, powers like unions have been undermined by four decades of deregulation ideology (Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, the two Bushes, and even Bill Clinton). For the same reason, the US government’s ability to regulate anything larger than kittens has waned. Extreme polarization, fear of killing gold (donor) geese and undermining national security means that most lawmakers are still turning a blind eye.
To prevent data monopolies from ruining our lives, we need to mobilize effective counter forces – and quickly.
Congress must assert individual ownership of the underlying data upon which AI systems are built. If Big AI wants to use our data, it needs something in return to address community-defined problems and make workers truly productive. What we need is not machine intelligence, but machine usability, which emphasizes the ability of computers to augment human capabilities. This would be a more profitable direction for improving productivity. Empowering workers and empowering human decision-making in the production process will also strengthen the social forces that can stand up to big tech companies. It will also require a more diversified approach to new technologies, which will have new implications for the Big AI monopoly.
It also protects privacy and encourages the proliferation of technology to monitor our behavior, such as surveillance capitalism and compliance with employers’ definitions of “acceptable” behavior, and police interpretation of law. We also need regulations to stop it. Real-time evaluation is now possible with AI. There is a real danger that AI will be used to manipulate our choices and distort our lives.
Finally, there should be a tiered system for corporate taxes so that if a company makes more profits on a dollar basis, the tax rate will be higher. Such a tax would put stockholder pressure on tech giants into bankruptcy, lowering their effective tax rates. More competition will create more diversity of ideas and more opportunities to develop a human-friendly direction for digital technology.
If these corporations want to stay together, higher taxes on their profits will allow them to fund public goods, especially education, so that people can cope with new technologies, technology, jobs and democracy. will be able to support a more human-oriented orientation of
Our future should not be left in the hands of two powerful corporations who use our collective data bluntly and gratuitously to build an ever-larger global empire.
Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson are professors at MIT and authors of Power and Progress: Our 1,000-year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity.
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