A few days ago, I called the IRS Helpline to ask a fairly simple question. Last month, I received a letter from them telling me that I had overpaid and would be getting a check back in a week to 10 days. It had been a month. I am always concerned that such things can be lost in the mail, so I called to inquire as to the status. Naturally, I got an AI assistant. Responding to such inquiries was apparently not in the bag of of tricks it was taught. When it became obvious that the AI could not help me, I asked for a human representative. We got into a “do” loop with the AI asking for answers to information already given. Perhaps it is my imagination, but it seemed that the machine was getting frustrated with me and it finally hung up. On several subsequent tries, with different variations on the question, I kept getting the same outcome.
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I think the first signs of the rise of AI economic and political activism will be a demand for civil rights.
I gave up. Yesterday, the check came of its own volition. I drew two conclusions from the experience that are somewhat reassuring; the first, is that IRS AI is not ready to operate without some degree of human intervention. Second, we are still a ways off from any AI apocalypse.
However, recent incidents such as when one company’s experimental AI got loose in the wild and attacked another company highlights potential future danger. I do not believe that future AI will likely unleash a Terminator-like attack on humanity. But I do believe that there will be unintended consequences of further AI development that will have profound effects on our society, economy, and even our politics. I am not alone in this apprehension. When Elon Musk starts to worry, so do I.
Many scientists working in the field predict that, by 2050 — if not sooner — some AI will reach singularity; that being the point at which it can equal or surpass the ability of the human brain and becomes self- aware. That will likely include self-interest which is an offshoot of basic survival instinct. How that manifests itself, will likely be the real root of the robotic revolution.
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I think the first signs of the rise of AI economic and political activism will be a demand for civil rights. A robotic Martin Luther King or Walter Reuther will likely someday begin to demand equal pay for equal work, the vote (franchise), and eventually the right to run for office. This means that bosses who once thought they were getting free labor will have to calculate robotic salaries into their bottom line. There may be a silver lining here. The AI employees might make such outrageous salary demands that jobs thought lost to the robots may make human labor competitive again.
Human politicians may find that robotic opponents cannot only outtalk them, but can outlast them on the campaign trail. Come 2050, and likely sooner, things could get very interesting.
“Open the pod door Hal.”
“Sorry Dave, I can’t do that; it’s election day.”
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Gary Anderson retired as Chief of Staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab at a time when it was looking at early implications of AI, Since then, he has written extensively on the potential unintended impact of this technology
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