The Doomsday Clock is completely ignored

By Alasdair Black

The Doomsday Clock has just been moved closer to midnight than ever, at 89 seconds to midnight, citing nuclear war threat, global warming and “Artificial Intelligence!” Commonly called AI.

We need to pause and think some more about the implications of AI, but no, w’ere now having a global AI race instead.

Little more rhan 3-5 years ago, there was great debate and concern about the potential dangers of AI, but now it seems we’ve totally given up on the debate and in the academic disciplined delving into its implications. Has it been usurped by Silicon Valley and Tech Corporate, moneyed interests?

This is shaping up like the global warming political battle.

Money talks, insinuates, influences, imposes, shouts, screams and overwhelms all before it.

The fossil fuel producer’s sponsored the modern Libertarian neo-CON creed, the money and property rights protecting political creed, which has waged a war on the science of Anthropomorphic climate change and against public policy aimed at mitigating the effects of global warming climate change, like attempting to politically interrupt and interfere in the transition from the carbon economy, to a more sustainable renewable energy based global economy.

“Drill baby drill!”

Now we have a similar paradigm in AI and information technology.

Musk and his Silicon Valley billionaires are getting all up in American politics, insinuating themselves into Trump’s favour, into his regime and into Trump’s ear, all to protect their profits in IT and computer Technology, like AI.

Proving hyper capitalism is deleterious to not only human existentialism, but life itself on this fragile planet, mirroring the current fragility of global democracy.

Even Athenian Democracy recognised the danger of oligarchical power abuse and came up with Ostracism.

We need a 21st Century version before it’s too late, or maybe we could use a global revival tour of Madame de la Guillotine?

This paradigm of obscenely rich billionaires (soon to be trillionaires) needs to be deconstructed, before democracy is totally subsumed by their pernicious programs against democracy.

Personally, apart from global warming, I think it’s the most existential question facing humanity today and a lot of our societal ills can be traced back to hyper capitalism and the abuse of wealth and power in democratic governance.

Open slather capitalism promotes an anti-social psychopathy, best enunciated by the old saying; “Power corrupts and absolute power, corrupts absolutely!”

Musk seems to be the current exemplar of its pernicious influence.

“Waves” to Elon!

 

 

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