Growth, degrowth, and the challenge of artificial superintelligence

Abstract

The implications of technological innovation for sustainability are becoming increasingly complex with information technology moving machines from being mere tools for production or objects of consumption to playing a role in economic decision making. This emerging role will acquire overwhelming importance if, as a growing body of literature suggests, artificial intelligence is underway to outperform human intelligence in most of its dimensions, thus becoming superintelligence. Hitherto, the risks posed by this technology have been framed as a technical rather than a political challenge. With the help of a thought experiment, this paper explores the environmental and social implications of superintelligence emerging in an economy shaped by neoliberal policies. It is argued that such policies exacerbate the risk of extremely adverse impacts. The experiment also serves to highlight some serious flaws in the pursuit of economic efficiency and growth per se, and suggests that the challenge of superintelligence cannot be separated from the other major environmental and social challenges, demanding a fundamental transformation along the lines of degrowth. Crucially, with machines outperforming them in their functions, there is little reason to expect economic elites to be exempt from the threats that superintelligence would pose in a neoliberal context, which opens a door to overcoming vested interests that stand in the way of social change toward sustainability and equity.

AI cheerleaders: Public relations, neoliberalism and artificial intelligence

“…In this article, I argue that modern PR practices are themselves heavily shaped by neoliberalism, an ideology which ‘confidently identifies itself with the future’ (Brown, 2006: 27). The article’s discussion is timely since, by some accounts, neoliberalism is moving into a new phase; shaped by new technologies and an AI-led ‘superintelligent’ economy (Pueyo, 2017; Purdy and Daugherty, 2016).…”

“…As with previous phases of neoliberalism, the emerging AI economy is being aggressively naturalised as the common-sense way of life (Pueyo, 2017) – and a ‘public good’ – through persuasive doctrines enabled by PR. Unfettered support for 21st-century AI technologies goes right up the food chain, from multinational businesses to national and regional governments, all keen to compete in the AI ‘space race’.…”

“…AI spending is forecast to grow from US$640 million in 2016 to US$375 billion by 2025 (Peet and Wilde, 2017). Some scholars argue that the advent of a so-called ‘superintelligent’ economy will enable neoliberalism to enter a transformative phase, in which machina economicus will replace homo economicus as the ultimate rational economic actor (Pueyo, 2017). AI is humanity’s inevitable future – or so we are told.…”

Artificial Intelligence In Legal Services: State-of-Art And Users’ Expectations In Russia

“…However, widely advertised AI capabilities to perform tasks or reasoning processes that are attributed to human intelligence exceeding the latter in speed and volume (Gartner, 2017;Horvitz, 2016;Pueyo, 2016;Rossi, 2016), gained the attention of legal community. McKinsey estimates that 22% of a lawyer's job and 35% of a paralegal's job can be automated and AI plays a significant role in this process (LawGeex, 2018).…”

Social Justice and Artificial Intelligence by Dr. Adnan Hadzi (University of Malta)

“…The paper will then look, in a more detailed manner, into theories analysing the historical and social systematisation, or one may say disposition, of laws, and the impingement of neo-liberal (Parikh, 2017) tendencies upon the adoption of AI technologies. Pueyo demonstrates those tendencies with a thought experiment around superintelligence in a neoliberal scenario (Pueyo, 2018). In Puevo's thought experiment the system becomes techno-social-psychological with the progressive incorporation of decisionmaking algorithms and the increasing opacity of such algorithms (Danaher, 2016), with human thinking partly shaped by firms themselves (Galbraith, 2015).…”