via Brandon Smith
The introduction of AI into popular consciousness and everyday usage has been rather disappointing, for the most part. And by that I mean, we’re not seeing any spectacular benefits to the presence of AI while the negatives keep piling up.
At best, AI represents an advancement for information structuring; a much faster way to sort, categorize and investigate the data landscape. I find it very useful for speeding up research, but it only works as long as you understand that AI often lies by omission. Or simply by hallucinating. Results can never be fully trusted, and should be backed by actual source material.
On the other hand, AI makes people incredibly lazy when it comes to understanding the world or pursuing a basic education. When the public takes AI information at face value because they don’t want to do their own research, it makes them dumber. I foresee a dark future, maybe a decade from now, where the vast majority of younger people have become mentally incompetent because all of their daily decisions and views of the world come from a reliance on AI.
Some people will argue that we’ve already hit that unfortunate threshold. But what is the ultimate purpose of AI? There’s hundreds of different answers depending on who you ask, however, only a few explanations stand out as true motivators for the race to artificial intelligence.
A labor-free utopia?
If you ask technologist dreamers like Elon Musk, the goal is unlimited production. Meaning, AI and robotics would take over the majority of human labor. In theory, this would result in a new age of what I would call “time abundance” which Musk believes would lead to a form of wealth abundance. In other words, technology makes individual labor unnecessary and thus, money becomes unnecessary because all basic needs would be provided for free or nearly free.
There are two daunting problems with this idea: First, it’s a claim we’ve been hearing for a very long time. The futurists and technocrats of every socialist revolution have been promising to eliminate drudgery and build a laborless Utopia for over a century. Usually this propaganda is designed to ease the public transition into a system in which the state controls production and limits individual freedoms (for their own good, of course).
The promise of a labor-free world is usually bait designed to lure citizens into heavier reliance on government. When your very survival is dependent on the system, it’s far less likely that you will ever rebel against it. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
I’m not saying that Musk is falsely promising a “Utopia”, I think he really does believe that AI and robotics are the answer to the age-old conundrum of the “wealth gap”, poverty and the production plateau. What I’m saying is, this dream is much further away than the year 2036, or even the year 2050. And, if we do reach it, it might not be as fantastical as we might hope.
Every new industrial age has it’s dreamers and they all imagine a world where human struggle is eliminated by machines. It never happens. I suspect robotics and AI would make some things easier, just as all tools make certain jobs easier, but let’s not forget that the further humanity moves away from self reliance the more we seem to be required to work to maintain a basic level of comfort.
Every previous industrial revolution has created benefits and perhaps a longer lifespan. But these moments of technological reformation also tend to create greater work demands and less time for the average person. I’m not convinced that the AI revolution will be much different.
This brings us to the second problem – nothing in life is ever free and here’s the reason why: Energy.
Musk’s vision of an AI super-industry running the majority of the world’s basic infrastructure and supplying the majority of our survival goods would require an unprecedented level of energy. Ever try to fly a drone? Ever look up the average battery life for a Boston Dynamics robot? Ever try to drive an EV cross-country?
You might get 30 minutes out of a consumer grade drone (45 minutes out of a military drone). You can get 4 hours out of an advanced robot. The massive battery in an electric car will give you around 300 miles of drive time. But when you recharge any of these items you’re going to be using the power grid. And, that power grid will largely be supplied by coal or natural gas. “Fossil fuel” products still run the world because they are the most efficient.
There’s a reason why only 5% of U.S. car owners drive an electric vehicle; the initial expense is high and the long-term savings are mediocre. More than that, though, the infrastructure is simply not in place to support a larger influx of EV users.
If 50% of American drivers bought an EV, this alone would increase the electrical load on U.S. power grids by around 15%. Add to this the power usage of data centers and AI computing needed to run a national robotics network and the resulting energy demands would crush the grid. Either that, or the cost of electricity would rise until demand hits a wall.
This is just for America (the most advanced nation). Don’t get me started on Europe, where their grid can’t even handle widespread use of air conditioners.
We could upgrade with solar (which is highly inefficient), or build extra nuclear power plants, but this would take decades to finish. General estimates indicate such a project would cost anywhere from $5 trillion on the low end to $15 trillion on the high end, and it would take 30 years to complete. We’re talking about a two-generation endeavor requiring a level of coordination and cooperation that simply does not exist in today’s political climate.
I mean, we can’t even get some people to admit that nuclear power is a clean source of energy.
To summarize, the world of production abundance and a work-free population is a long way off, because the energy resources for that kind of industrial revolution simply don’t exist. At best, we could build a supplementary economy in which robotics and AI are used as tools to make things faster or easier. The average person is still going to have to get a 9-to-5 job and will still have to make money to live.
All of this relies on good intentions behind the rush to AI supremacy, and yes, I realize how funny that sounds.
A freedom-less dystopia?
The worst case scenario is the more likely one, which means that AI, data centers and robotics will be used to empower elitist groups and make controlling the population easier. When I examine institutions like the WEF, the IMF, the BIS and so on, their involvement with AI revolves around the digitization of the economy (a cashless society) and maximizing surveillance of the population through real-time data tracking. Imagine all the horrors of a CBDC, now connected to a tireless watcher with hard-coded instructions to find potential troublemakers “reform” them…
Until these bad actors people are removed from the equation, no AI system can be trusted to operate in the best interests of its users. Arguably the technology can be used for good. But the same tools can be used to do evil. The sheer number and variety of possible crimes ramps up with a force multiplier like AI.
For authoritarian applications, much less energy is needed. The existing grid could handle the spread of Flock cameras, the AI analysis of biometrics and license plate readers, the constant surveillance of financial transactions etc. Rising electrical consumption might conceivably be offset by rationing domestic electricity consumption (in the name of saving the Earth from climate change, of course). Greenwashing the job of running a network of eyes and ears becomes even more simple.
Total information awareness on the part of governments and international entities is a bad thing. They don’t need to know everything we’re doing; it’s better that they know less and retain a healthy level of fear when it comes to the popular mood. When the bureaucracy is no longer afraid because they have everyone under a microscope, that’s when terrible things are going to happen.
The information economy itself is a fantasy?
Beyond the best- and worst-case scenarios for AI and robotics rests a middle-ground explanation for the AI rush. That’s the concept of the “information economy.” In its most basic form, the information economy taps into algorithms to gather behavioral data for companies to target selling and marketing of products; the building of individual consumer profiles for better advertising and higher profits. It’s the same sort of surveillance, but for commercial purposes.
As many people know, these algorithms get most things wrong and rarely compel us to buy anything we weren’t already going to purchase. As for the idea of information replacing raw resources as the engine of the global economy, all I can think of is the financial sector’s blind faith in the complex web of financial derivatives and credit-default swaps in the early 2000s. I say an economy built on intangible products is an economy destined for collapse.
This is one of the primary reasons I believe it’s smart to diversify long-term savings with physical precious metals. They’re just about the only financial assets you can own outright and hold in your hands. In many ways, gold and silver are the opposite of a technocratic Utopian’s dream, in which “You will own nothing and you will be happy.” I argue that owning physical precious metals means there’s at least one last basion of personal economic liberty that cannot be taken away from you. (Except by force. Go on, try it. I dare you…) One asset that isn’t dependent on anyone’s balance sheet or next quarter’s profit report. Best of all, that can’t be debased or inflated away by a central banker’s whim.
Paradoxically, the explosion in AI datacenter construction requires access to gold and silver. Every high-density AI datacenter rack contains up to 2/3 oz of gold and up to 10 oz of silver. Both metals are irreplaceable thanks to their unique chemical profiles. So long as the hyperscaler frenzy continues, I expect tight markets globally for both metals and major price support from this industrial demand.
In its most insidious form, the information economy strives for predictive power. That is to say, companies and governments hope to use complex AI analysis of market behavior to predict larger shifts in the economic and political landscape. And, if you can predict these shifts, you could theoretically influence them as well.
This was the ultimate goal of companies like Google (tracking search trends to the point of becoming omniscient). AI just makes the real-time analysis easier. That said, I suspect predicting mass economic and political changes is a lot like predicting the weather… You might be able to guess a few days ahead, but the complexities of the system make long term prognostication impossible. The technocratic faith in a digital Nostradamus is a delusion.
At bottom, the application of AI, robotics, data centers, and related technologies could cause a sea change in the way we live our lives, but not because these changes are inevitable. Rather, these changes would have to be forced, or, triggered by a lack of awareness on the part of the public.
AI is not an industrial revolution in the traditional sense because it’s not driven by free market demand. Most people can easily live without AI and the benefit to their lives is barely noticeable or non-existent. The second industrial revolution introduced electricity, unprecedented medical advancement, long distance communications and easy transportation; all things that people never want to live without.
AI pales in comparison so far, and the promises that propel its popularity require an energy renaissance that isn’t possible for many decades to come. Sadly, the most logical use for the proliferation of AI is suppression of the populace. For the autocrats, the AI race is not about improving the future for the common man. It’s about injecting the technology of ubiquitous surveillance into the common man’s life – before he has a chance to realize he’s being chained down by it.
Without extensive open-source laws, extensive public oversight and the elimination of elitist influence, I believe the AI arms race can only result in disaster. In the meantime, every ounce of gold and silver in the hands of freedom-minded citizens is one less the techno-Utopians can use to construct their digital cage.