image by AI, of course; my own prompt
Climate change may be a mechanism through which the planet eases its human burden…[or] new patterns of disease could trim the human population…War could have a major impact…weapons of mass destruction — notably biological and (soon) genetic weapons, more fearsome than before…It is not the number of states that makes this technology ungovernable. It is technology itself. The ability to design new viruses for use in genocidal weapons does not require enormous resources of money, plant or equipment…In part, governments have created this situation. By ceding so much control over new technology to the marketplace, they have colluded in their own powerlessness.
If anything about the present century is certain, it is that the power conferred on ‘humanity’ by new technologies will be used to commit atrocious crimes against it. If it becomes possible to clone human beings, soldiers will be bred in whom normal human emotions are stunted or absent. Genetic engineering may enable centuries-old diseases to be eradicated. At the same time, it is likely to be the technology of choice in future genocides. Those who ignore the destructive potential of new technologies can only do so because they ignore history. Pogroms are as old as Christendom; but without railways, the telegraph and poison gas there could have been no Holocaust. There have always been tyrannies, but without modern means of transport and communication, Stalin and Mao could not have built their gulags. Humanity’s worst crimes were made possible only by modern technology.
— John Gray, Straw Dogs (2002)
I recently summarized Hank Green’s well-researched 15 ‘biggest fears’ about AI. Underlying his list is an awareness that it is how new technology is used (and abused) that poses its greatest danger.
Organized crime has long been a user of technology to further its hideous ends. And by ‘organized crime’ I’m not just referring to the mafia and street gangs. I’m referring to any organized group that routinely commits criminal acts. That includes:
- Corporations that use technology to addict and exploit us for profit, most recently for ‘surveillance pricing’ (using private information about us to gouge us with prices higher than other customers pay). Ticket scalpers are a notorious example, but most large corporations are now starting to use AI to reprice (upwards) all their goods and services to the maximum amount each individual customer will bear. This is combined with price fixing by corporate oligopolies and cartels to ensure you can’t find a lower price anywhere else. This is not capitalism — it’s outright criminality. Surveillance pricing is now being used to individually price medical services, rents, restaurant and grocery foods, fuel prices — just about everything you buy, both essentials and ‘luxuries’.
- Governments and agencies that are using AI for illegal surveillance and harassment of all of us, and illegal acts of war (including ‘economic warfare’), terrorism, extrajudicial killing, and genocide. This is especially true in rogue states (including the US now) that act in open contravention of international law and their own domestic laws.
- Phishers, spammers, identity thieves, extortionists, saboteurs, character assassins, and other online criminal groups using technology to steal, falsify or destroy our information and money.
- Stock market, currency market, housing market and other gambling and speculation arena manipulators using AI to facilitate more and more elaborate insider trading, hostile takeovers, sophisticated cons and Ponzi schemes.
- Lobbying, hate- and fear-mongering, censors, disinformation agencies, conspiracy theory groups, pressure and media groups (including, now, most corporate-owned mainstream media as well as social media) using AI to create fake reports, fake images and fake videos to misinform, stir up hatred, and cause us to distrust the veracity of anything we hear or see second hand that doesn’t conform to what we already believe.
- And, of course, organized thieves using AI to steal our ‘intellectual property’.
Just as, when we have created any form of weaponry (up to nuclear and biological weapons) we ‘should have known’ that this weaponry would be appropriated for criminal uses, we ‘should have known’ that AI was just an open invitation to criminals to exploit it to their own advantage and at our expense.
But that’s just the point: We did know. We may live in an era of unprecedented intellectual poverty, but we’re not that unimaginative. Why didn’t we act? Because we can’t. You simply can’t ban or hide or protect new technologies from being used by anyone who can afford them. And you can’t presume that only a tiny controllable portion of the population will be motivated to abuse those technologies, especially when in many cases the criminals don’t actually see what they’re doing as abusive or otherwise immoral.
The organizations that have attempted to stop online spamming, robocalls, phishing, Credit Card and ATM scams and other online and telephone-tech criminal activity have essentially thrown in the towel — they have given up trying to prevent these crimes and have shifted (mostly unsuccessfully) to try to detect them.
That’s what we’re likely going to see in almost all AI-assisted crimes going forward — waiting until the crimes have been committed, and then (we hope) trying to figure out how to help the victims after the fact.
And as more and more governments put themselves above the law (illegal presidential decrees, ‘end justifies the means’ excuses for illegal wars and acts, ‘insider’ corruption on a grand scale), and as more and more corporations put themselves above the law (buying off and shutting down regulators to enable illegal acts to ‘maximize profits’), we are also likely to lose hope that our broken and corrupted legal system is going to compensate us.
We can’t defend ourselves from this. It’s almost certain that we have all, already, been victimized by multiple AI-enabled crimes. Feeling helpless in this situation is normal — lots of people (especially the poor and sick) have lived all their lives in constant fear and anxiety as victims of criminals who can seemingly act with impunity.
We might all soon learn what they’ve been feeling.
