Vinod Khosla, you may not know him, but you probably know his company - Sun Microsystems. Yes, company behind Java language. Why I'm talking about him? Because I think he and his latest statements are great examples of how capitalism erodes democracy, and turns into technocracy. I'm talking about this https://www.khoslaventures.com/ai-dystopia-or-utopia/ piece he wrote. It's about AI, but later in his text, Mr Vinod scares us of China being leader in AI, great inequality that AI may create, he also talks about democracy. But at the end, he writes this:
why should we be more comfortable with the global influence of unelected leaders like Xi Jinping than with that of tech CEOs?
And I'm like, wtf? You just wrote whole essay about democracy, and how AI can turn into dystopia, but at the end, you want us to choose between unselected Xi Jinping, and also unselected CEOs of tech companies with their boards full of rich people? So, where is the difference? Because I can't see any!
This is one of the examples, that people in power just want more power and money, even if they talk about beautiful ideas, like Vinod, at the end they just want more and more.
Vinod writes a lot about AI, he thinks AI can solve many problems. And I'll say it again and again, to anyone who thinks that AI will solve our current problems - No. It will not. Currently, we have all the tools to solve world problems. Hunger? Sure, western countries throw tones of food yearly. USA throws tones of wheat into ocean just to keep its price fixed. Cancer? Who knows what pharmaceutical companies keep in their basements full of patents they bought from smart people, just to keep them hidden and never use them. You think this is a conspiracy theory? No, it is a huge problem, even WHO wrote about it. It was shown many times in a main stream media, last time I've seen it in a Netflix series "New Amsterdam". And yet, no one can do anything about it. So, when I hear, that AI will heal the world problems, it makes me laugh. We make the same mistakes over and over again, only in a new tech stack. People used to think the same about electricity, cars, planes - does any of that helped to solve problems like people dying from hunger? Wars? No. It made lifes of part of the population easier, mostly in already developed countries, but the rest, a bilions of people, still suffer in poverty.
So, when I hear from rich CEOs, that AI will help the world, I want to ask: why don't you share part of your wealth with world now? It will also help a lot.
In conclusion, I would like to say that IMO capitalism actually holds the world back. And if we want to change something, we don't need new shiny technology, we need major shift in our thinking. Because capitalism comes with many false promises, like constant growth. Constant growth just can not be sustained in finite system we currently live in. I mean the planet. And planet actually suffers from our naive and careless approach. We know pretty well something, what does the same. It is called cancer.
Cancer is a group of diseases associated with abnormal growth of cells that tend to grow uncontrollably and spread throughout the body which can eventually lead to the death of the organism from which they originate.
Sounds familiar? Let it sink. And let's think about that the next time some CEO, follower and main beneficiary of capitalism, promises us to fix the world with another new technology.