AI is Not the Problem, It's 'Shareholder Value' That Will Kill Us

Same old, same old.

Artwork by Bianca Rothschild Created in Midjourney

It’s been said that marketers ruin everything, think Facebook and Instagram —were fun once, now not so much, —in fact they’re actually hard work if that’s your main channel for marketing.

I would go further to say algorithms ruined everything, which are amped up marketers really. One could call them the OG AI marketers perhaps. Same for Spotify, Youtube and Google. While great of course for all the reasons of finding things you like fast and making suggestions based on popularity, but basically algorithms are terrible for magic, serendipity and diversity. And soul destroying for artists, who are now forced to create for the algo in order to survive. (Never mind what that actually means for culture.)

So why do people, and very smart people, think AI is going to kill us if we don’t start to pay attention? And why all of a sudden, when culture has slowly been impacted by algorithms all this time.

Let’s for a moment, forecast into the eternally hungry ‘shareholder bottom line.’ To me, it’s this mentality that will kill us, regardless of AI. It’s been doing a very consistent job over the past 80 years of ruining pretty much everything —from our planet to our health to our education, our food, and even our ability as humans to get along (or at least not have wars..just sayin’).

No-one wants to talk about sustainability, everyone is obsessed with growth. There is this sense of fear which has gripped our world, that has become about saving oneself at all costs, and that there is not enough to go around. Or power is everything, and that having this power will save you, and those who you choose to save.

I write about technology as a mirror of conscious. And technology has whispered to us repeatedly, that our power and peace is when we all collaborate and work together. That’s how the internet exists, because we all made it together. One domain name, one website at a time, pixel by pixel. Yes, even the people we don’t like —and the baddies. We ALL made the internet together. That’s what it looks like to be One. To not judge, to give people voice and space. Of course there have been censors and firewalls, but in its core it reflects as an equalizer. Add the sweetener of open source software and it becomes metaphysical on some level.

You don’t need to go to Burning Man or Bhutan to see into the mystery of life. We can just look at technology that’s around us, and see what we have created, and what’s reflecting back to us in the state of what is, and what’s possible.

What if life does actually have a way of living through everything,
if we just have the wit to see it? Including a computer screen.

So here we are once again presented with a technology —AI. A tool, that for this argument’s sake, is neutral. A natural evolution of our collective creativity into a greater possibility and synergy. All our collective experiences being collated and compared, showing the strengths and weaknesses of our humanness. A feat of truly epic proportions really. Cut to —what I see from past patterns is a ‘no-holds-barred’ reality that AI will be used for growth at all costs, and sadly not for examining the power of the collective to evolve together. AI will be maxed out by those who already use everything on the planet for their current ‘growth strategies’, regardless of damages. Let’s call them the big guys. The big guys are experienced in winner takes all, me, me, me, and the chronically broken misconception of capitalism being ‘increasing shareholder value’. And nothing will be learnt, and AI will be blamed and used to gaslight creators and innovators, and distract from the take mongers.

AI to me offers a hugely pivotal moment to actually ask these ‘machines’ about optimising life on earth, helping humanity to discover and explain ways to help everyone. Imagine that? Let’s engineer those questions. If you had a super genius computer who could make some very educated and innovative suggestions, based on masses of data and life promoting patterns that could solve our collective human problems, what would you ask?

“AI, how can we all get along?”

It’s boring to me watching the same old game play out. Really, until the conversation evolves past shareholder value, which I can’t see happening soon, AI is just another tool for pushing the me, me, me game plan. There’s really no point panicking about machines taking over the world. There’s more chance of them saving us rather than getting the big guys to ever change - we can’t add ‘ethics’ into their programming.

I have owned a website hosting company for over 15 years, trust me, if there’s no human being standing by to hot swap a hard drive when it fails, the future of AI is short lived. Read this great article by Timothy B Lee for an epic dive into this physical reality debate. Or go hang out in a datacenter (if they let you in), and ask them about the cooling room fall back system generator. Servers get hot just like your laptop does and need power to run. To me the machine takeover prophecy is thin on the ground.

AI is trained on huge datasets, datasets that have been created by human activity and creativity. That to me represents the collective. Is that not poetry right there?

Giga-tons of zeros and ones, made by humans everywhere. Potentially, with the ‘right’ AI programming overlaid we can solve some beautifully meaningful questions. If we dare to ask with genuine intention.

Perhaps that’s why the computer in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy answered 42 to the question, ‘What is the meaning of life?” Because if real answers where actually delivered would any one even have listened?

So in a world where money is everything, me, me, me will have a hard time finding its way back to morals and ethics, and no significant shift can take place.

Well maybe not immediately, because if we do go down this greedy road, and as the AI optimized ‘growth’ happens, and humans are supposedly replaced by AI’s, and everything is changed beyond repair. There may be a sweet return to a slower and more gentle way of being. A return to humanity, we can call it. Just like during lockdown, when there was a hiatus from the growth mentality, and priorities shifted. An opening occurred where nature flourished and people began to make new decisions. The mass resignation and people relocating outside of major cities where some unexpected side effects, a step away from growth, and a step towards regeneration.

Could we consume less, move more, start small businesses to contribute to community life instead of market making? The answers remain unknown. We will of course all be watching the story unfold in real time.

My wish today is for anyone in fear about machines ending us to consider the less glamorous, kinda touchy, and not talked about enough threat of shareholder value ending us…because that my friends is at the root of this.

We’re all connected, so your own peace on the subject may hold down your piece of the universe, while others have a moment to catch on.

Until next time. Be Bold. Be Beautiful.

Take care Bianca xo