AI as a Spam Service (AaaSS)
The Global Automaton is Nigh, they say
Suppose the global automaton fallacy is not actually a fallacy. Suppose the creator of a global automaton does indeed make their project economically viable.
What are we left with as humans?
The Work
Since we, by the time the global automaton arrives, would now be able to ‘outsource’ all our learning, creating and ‘hard labour’ to it, the work remaining would be very little to nothing; much like the movie ‘Idiocracy’.
As it turns out, technology often has the effect of not only replacing jobs, or making work easier, it also has the tendency to overwhelm us humans when it comes to i) learning, ii) doing, and iii) decision making.
Well, for the sake of the argument, we are going to assume for now that one of these is more important than the other two.
Let’s take decision making. The decisions we make help us not only get things done via long-term thinking and planing, but they also help us realise the consequences of certain ‘experiments’ we do throughout our entire lives; ergo, decisions help us learn to.
But if AI can do all we can do, then what’s the point of agonising over decisions when could outsource all that thinking and doing to the AI?
The Outcome
The reality is that both producers and consumers of both information and physical artefacts will naturally be spammed by ai in terms of choice or decisions they have to make.
According to Barry Schwartz via The Paradox of Choice : more choices make us less happy as humans. According to this theory, humans prefer to satisfice rather than to incessantly optimise decision-making. We basically prefer to have limited choice in order to make better decisions that we are more satisfied with over the long run. Agonising over decisions (and increased options) not only wastes time, it also makes us less happy with the choice we finally make.
The general outcome of this is that if we have more options in terms of 1) production, or 2) consumption, of 3) information, or 4) artefact; then we will be less happy in general.
The Dread
The real question ai creators and ai users have to face is whether it even makes sense, economically and psychologically, to make ‘generalised intelligence’ as ubiquitous as oxygen. Yes, having oxygen everywhere doesn’t make it less valuable to life sustenance. But no, ‘intelligence’ is not as valuable to life as oxygen is; it is only as valuable as the supply and demand mechanisms behind it. Meaning, the moment it becomes widely available, no one will want to pay for it. But even worse, like porn, many may start to lose interest in it; or it may shape humanity for the unintended outcome of outsourcing thinking, doing and decision making to robots.
We want to prevent anarchy as much as possible. But outsourcing thinking, doing, and decision making to robots or aliens may not help that cause. We have laws and governments for a reason : to hold people accountable for their actions, their intent, their choices and their thoughts. Without that, we have anarchy.
The Spam
We already have to contend with emails, calls, ads, and messages sent by automatons. Imagine if we have to contend with drivers, workers, creators and messengers who are themselves automatons. Life is already spammy. But it is about to become a lot more like Alice in Wonderland, where things are a lot more artificial than real.
The basic philosophical assumptions that global automaton promoters seem to have are : i) humans prefer consumption to production, ii) production is better when automated, iii) work is a necessary evil, iv) cheap and easy-to-access entertainment is preferable to expensive and difficult-to-access entertainment.
The reality is that we work (iii) in order to fulfil identified needs (i); which is often satisfying in itself (plus the economic reward). We also tend to value things that are not widely available (iv, and ii), and automation doesn’t favour the less is more principle.
Some might prefer the world of filth, noise, spam and spambots. The rest of us prefer a world that is clean, with a lot less noise, a lot more humanly designed for humans, and a lot more humans.
