Corporate monstrosities

I am not interested in a future where profit-driven corporatocracy rules

Big tech corporations are failing to serve humanity. Instead, they are turning humans into automatons being manipulated by invisible algorithms. Social media is psychologically crafted to hijack your attention span without delivering any information of value. Shopping experiences are carefully designed to trick your brain into buying items that deliver little to no value. The complexity of modern existence is such that we are continuously being manipulated mentally and always in too much of a hurry to stop and contemplate what is happening.

Meanwhile, our quality of life is declining because of big tech. Google used to value not being evil. That ended fairly quickly, at least on the timescale of human affairs.¹ Google dropped the motto “Don’t be evil,” and went full evil. The phrase "Don't be evil," became Google’s tagline in the late 1990s and became a central part of Google's corporate culture and code of conduct. The motto served as a guide to employees in making ethical decisions and maintaining the company's integrity, especially as it began to prioritize selling ads over delivering its original product - useful search results that helped people find the things they wanted and needed.

Now, the company is hell bent on dominating AI.

“Google is ready to test the AI waters with its search engine, which has been synonymous with finding things on the internet for the past 20 years and serves as the pillar of a digital advertising empire that generated more than $220 billion in revenue last year.

“We are at an exciting inflection point,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told a packed developers conference in a speech peppered with one AI reference after another. “We are reimagining all our products, including search.”

More AI technology will be coming to Google’s Gmail with a ‘Help Me Write’ option that will produce lengthy replies to emails in seconds, and a tool for photos called ‘Magic Editor’ that will automatically doctor pictures.”

Artificial intelligence really isn’t - yet. That does not mean a self-aware machine created by humans will not appear on the horizon - it most certainly seems likely that silicon-based sentient computing systems aren’t far off.

Google turned evil, so what is stopping Alphabet, Inc. from creating an AI that also turns evil. When profits matter more than ethics, the answer is likely to be that nothing is stopping Google from creating an AI lacking “do no harm” limiters.

Corporations and militaries are already building weapons systems that can autonomously decide which humans are threats, and when to eliminate those threats.² Ukraine’s lopsided war to survive against the invading Russians is a proving ground. So are other global conflicts. Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza is also a proving ground for military uses of AI.

One commonly proposed principle among researchers and the military alike is that there should be a ‘human in the loop’ of autonomous weapons. But where and how people should or must be involved is still up for debate. Many, including Suchman, typically interpret the idea to mean that human agents must visually verify targets before authorizing strikes and must be able to call off a strike if battlefield conditions change (such as if civilians enter the combat zone). But it could also mean that humans simply program in the description of the target before letting the weapon loose — a function known as fire-and-forget.

Corporations motivated by greed should not drive human “progress.” Nor should we allow autonomous entities to decide who lives and who dies. That sounds obvious, but that is not the way the world is progressing. The world changes whether or not I agree with the way it is changing. Human systems always increase in complexity, and Google is now officially evil. Those two facts do not bode well for a future where the human species is thriving and evolving in positive ways.

I do not wish to be forced to rent features in my “smart car.” I do not wish to be attacked by a robotic police dog that mistakes me for a felon on the run. I do not wish to spend my life in a bubble of consumerism that encourages me to pointlessly consume. I do not wish to become a victim of autonomous AI.

Where are the philosophers, the ethicists, and the great visionaries? Why are their voices being silenced by the Musk’s and the Bezos’ of the world? There is a dangerous shift happening, and I am afraid it will end in some altered reality where humanity becomes trapped in a world controlled by corporate monsters and their algorithms.

I am wondering what my small voice can contribute to changing the future into one where individual humans are still relevant, and taking care of our tribes and our environment is the first priority always.

1. Dark Google is on the rise.

2. Lethal AI weapons are here.