“The Loop – How Technology is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back” by Jacob Ward, 2022
This book is about AI. Ward is a mainstream reporter for NBC News, and his beat is technology. This is a series of interviews and experiences about disparate applications of AI, trying to warn us about its dangers or uses in many fields. The value of the book is in his description of the breadth of AI’s present impact, not his theoretical slant. He posits 3 ‘loops’ of behavior radiating outward, riffing off of ‘dual process’ theory – 1, basic, unconscious and automatic instincts; 2, rational and slow deliberations and 3, machine imitations of both. He contends we are entering the ‘third loop’ – computer algorithms taking over from independent human thought, feelings and action. Is this Skylink? He doesn’t quite go that far. He does prove we cannot leave this planet to inhabit Mars, as the Muskites claim, or other exoplanets, so this is our only ‘space ship.’
Whether you think a reporter firmly entrenched in a large corporate newsroom is some kind of guide to ‘fighting back’ is another matter. While very conscious of the role capitalist profiteering is playing in substituting AI for humans, Ward predictably advocates some nebulous kind of ‘regulation.’ Prior regulation has improved life for the working-class but it is also an endless battle between activists and the forces of capital. It implicitly allows backsliding as wealth power periodically overwhelms or stymies ‘reformist’ power for years and years. In Ward’s specific case his solutions are sub-reformist. Even the EU has better ideas.
Ward is somewhat clueless about certain things, like
understanding credit scores, the dashboard light on his car, his use of music
playlists or how not to use a GPS. Everything’s
a black box to him. He at one time
thought that the poor were there for lack of character. He seems to think most or all people are
easily fooled because of their base instincts, laziness or gullibility, which
is opening the door to the convenience and guidance of AI. He says we guess, we use stereotypes, we are
bad at estimating probability and actual risk.
All true. So addiction to these
technologies is real and growing, extending to children. He makes the
astonishing point that our decisions are not all logical! So this conditions
his text, which reads like no one knows what is going on, emotions are
always in the driver’s seat and we just got out of a cave.
AI
Applications
AI has been around since 1956. It is combinations of machine learning -
supervised, unsupervised and reinforced. He, like many, discounts the 'General omniscient' version of AI, GAI. Where is AI being applied? There is communication software for divorced
couples that coaches them on how to better relate to each other in dealing with
themselves and their children. There are
programs that look at the people behind job resumes, car and mortgage loan
requests, rental applications, public benefits, federal grants, bail bonds and
insurance policies. Ad placement on the
internet is now done by AI. AI drives game and gaming platforms to find those
who can be addicted. Psychotherapy is
being administered by AI. Publishing
on-line is using AI to discover and guide readers to what they already like. Every
digital platform – TikTok, FaceBook, X, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, etc. -
uses AI to addict and ‘engage’ users. Disease
spread, like CoVid, is being predicted and monitored by AI. Decisions about whether to cover a company
through health insurance is done by AI. There are programs that create visual
art, create music, create screenplays, create reviews by borrowing from prior
human work. Employees are surveilled by corporate software. Education will be next. All of this is based on billions of points of
data fed into pattern recognition software.
And that is just the civil side. The military uses software in planes and ships
to recognize missile threats in a split second and respond. The Israeli “Iron Dome” is an example of a
land-based system. Autonomous military
and police drones powered by AI now play a key role in warfare and surveillance,
along with patrols. Soldier robots are in the testing stage, but limitations on
their physical intelligence is holding things up. Cyberwarfare is just another level of
conflict now. Some police departments use software to target ostensibly crime-prone
blocks or neighborhoods for patrol. Camera
surveillance software, like facial recognition technology, is used to try to
identify criminals, and TSA programs supposedly detect ‘nervousness’ in
airports. Immigrants might be the next target, not just from border drones. Every dictatorship, theocracy and police
state is also using or acquiring these technologies now. Every political campaign is trying to harness
them.
Do all these AI programs work well? No, as they are biased, reductive, repetitive
and sometimes just plain stupid. Ward
details their limitations or problems, especially around color caste and class,
as the AI mimics past prejudices. You can feed the exact same question into two
AI chatbots and get two different answers.
Input a request for a review of a book or play and you will get a basic,
descriptive vanilla sandwich. You can
input a prompt in a music program and get bizarre results or really good ones.
 |
| Not Quite the Sistine Chapel |
Yet some programs do work as intended, like the
automatic missile response and divorce communication software. He advocates using AI to detect problems in criminal prosecutions,
incarceration and crime, not just for who should be charged, but who freed or
left alone. And there’s the rub. Anything that reduces labor will be preferred
by a firm or government entity, especially as the world gets more complex. Complexity
and acceleration are built into the framework of modern capitalism and AI is
part of this. But if there is no obvious money or savings in it, then it will
languish.
Details,
Details
Ward’s exact solutions?
He ignores the profit motive and social control, as that would undermine
the whole rationale of capital. His
suggestions are wonky and sub-reformist though he nods to the need for ‘ethics’
and a vague ‘regulatory framework’
and realizes that these systems are not self-correcting.
He advocates: 1) Separate courts for ‘necessary’ tech
innovations to exempt companies from damages, like autonomous car accidents; 2) Legislation to solve highly
emotional dangers, like a rear camera on vehicles to avoid backing over a
child; 3) Using 30 inputs to decide
on home insurance coverage which suggest improvements for homeowners, instead
of just a few broad facts; 4) using
a cost-benefit analysis to estimate future and inevitable legal harm from AI; 5) Make the courts see that monetizing
engagement is a form of theft; 6) Use AI to help NGOs, social-service
agencies and city governments predict future needs or problems. 7) There needs to be a transparency for
algorithms, not a mysterious black box.
If you
are interested in the topic, this will introduce you to where AI is already in
place. As to his theorizing, there are 9
kinds of intelligence, and many of these transit his ‘loops,’ so his theory is a clunky
visualization of what is really going on. For instance one reason robots are
helpless at many physical tasks is because they don’t have physical
(body-kinesthetic) intelligence as humans do.
His ‘loop’ theory replicates a Marxist ‘base-superstructure’ model but
only in the psychological / emotional / intellectual realm, and resorts to circularity. It ignores the actual material basis of
society and AI, so he’s missing a 'ground' in his social psychology. A symptom of that is his complete ignoring of job losses due to AI and the huge electric energy used by AI.
For all you anti-Tech lefties, pay attention. Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, even Mao and the Luddites were not
against technology, only against its misuse by capital. AI is just the latest – something that techno-Marxists
have said could be useful in economic planning nationally and worldwide.
Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box,
upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Psychology
and Capitalism,” “The Happiness Industry,” “Lost Connections” (Hari);
“McMindfulness,” “New Dark Age,” “The Global Police State,” “R.U.R. and the
Insect Play” (Capek); “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” (Bastani); “Cyber-Proletariat,”
“Bit Tyrants,” ‘People’s Republic of Wal-Mart,” “Democracy, Planning, Big
Data.”
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog / June 6, 2024 – Remember D-Day 80 years ago!
No comments:
Post a Comment