We are on the threshold of the age of artificial intelligence (AI), which is exciting, but we are also fearful. What if our intelligence is not different from that of the machines, and worse, could it be that we are also machines? And will machines take over the world?
Al is everywhere: in decision making, pattern recognition, and emulation of cognitive tasks that lie beyond what any person can do. It is displacing humans from both labor-intensive jobs and those where reasoning is required. Al is widely successful, for most jobs are procedural, and to know the limitations of AI, one must consider the phenomenon of consciousness.
Meanwhile, a population collapse is coming, the beginnings of which are to be seen in Asia and Europe. The collapse is due in part to technology that gives humans greater agency over their bodies, but also because Al-based social media (SM) has so influenced our minds that many see no need to have families.
Some say that Al and SM have made the world flat-everyone has equal access to the technology and people are all interconnected-quite as in the medieval flat earth conception when people took the sun to shine on every place identically. If the flat earth period was characterized by religious fervor and wars, the Al age could similarly energize medieval sects and new religions.
Since Al makes it possible to surveil people, it is likely to be used by organizations and governments to punish beliefs that are not officially approved. Inconvenient ideas are already being banned in some places, and colleges and universities in many countries are clamping down on open debate, insisting that the past be presented through the lens of victimhood.
Al is like a broken mirror which reveals certain aspects of reality, without providing an understanding of the whole thing. The brain gets rewired based on what it does; so, the more one uses Al, the more one's way of thinking gets changed. The rewired brain is content to be absorbed in the fleeting images on social media, and ideas of family and children become irrelevant; it is then that the individual's memory can serve as a shield.
Although not associated with any specific belief, Al appears to suggest that the world is an algorithm, which is equivalent to radical materialism. As in the past, such a body-centric philosophy will lead to dogmatism and close-mindedness. Some say AI will encourage rationality, just as science did in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but quantum theory has shown that materialistic rationality does not fully explain reality.
As Al becomes ubiquitous, its regulation will become important, for it will be used not only by firms and private individuals but also by governments. If other Al machines are used to regulate it, that will lead to the question quis custodiet ipsos custodies who will guard the guards?
Extrapolating from current trends, the political future in the age of Al will not be the unipolar world that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The decline of a modern great power is as inevitable as the fall of an empire, the causes of which most often are imperial overreach and widespread migration. As the world globalizes further, the cultural clash between new immigrant groups that espouse radical sectarianism and the host populations will sharpen.
The largest players in the competition in economic and political spheres are the United States, China, and India. India's GDP is in the top three in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) in dollars and is expected to enter the top three by nominal dollars in a couple of years. These are also the world's largest countries by population, although in the reverse order-India, China, and the US.
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