( A six-minute read)

If we ever wanted more evidence that we are now on the cusp of an event that is going to have a disastrous effect on society we only have to look at what is happening in the world at the moment.

Every advance in technology is moving us further and further from our attachment to nature.

Years of Capitalism for profit has produced – Pollution/Waste/ Excessive production/ Wars/ Climate change and technology in the form of AI. All asking the question is Capitalism obsolete?

It is not working for the vast majority of humanity.

Now faced with the arrival of Artificial intelligence, which if not regulated will control market forces, with the super-rich oligopoly of data billionaires reaping the wealth of automation and profit-seeking algorithms to the detriment of us all.

The more AI advances into a general purpose technology that permeates every aspect of life the less sense it makes to allow it to remain in the private hands rather than of the many.

Indeed there is already a case for nationalizing AI.

Its very pervasiveness is invading not just democracy but our private and social lives.  Causing wars and exploitation of not just us but our economies – High-Frequency Trading, Sovereign Wealth funds, Currency trading, Trade Agreements, down to what toilet paper you wipe your arse with.

Its inability to spread the wealth, to tackle inequality and poverty not to mention its exploitation of privacy and democracy have recently seen -FaceBook.

No company should be allowed to possess an exclusive cutting edge technology or core AI platform. Indeed with Deep learning, we are now beginning to see programmers feeding computers with learning algorithms that expose them to terabytes of data resulting in software writing software.

THERE IS NO DISPUTING THAT THE WORLD IS GOING TO NEED THE POWER OF AI TO RESOLVE FORTHCOMING PROBLEMS.

But it must serve society as a whole instead of the private capitalist operating in their own self- centered interests.

It must be brought under social control by Regulation with the creation of a virtual world strongroom, where a copy of all original AI algorithms, software programs are required by law to be lodged to be held and vetted re there compliance with our core values.

As I said in a previous post;

We need to create a class of ‘algorithmic auditors’ — trusted representatives of the public who can peer into the code to see what kinds of implicit political and ethical judgments are buried there and report their findings back to us.

This is a good idea, though it poses practical problems about how companies

can retain the commercial edge provided by their computerized secret sauce if

they have to open up their algorithms to quasi-official scrutiny.

It is very unlikely that this will happen. We are however in danger of

App exploitation not only for profit but when there is no immediate cash peril –

culture, education, and crime.

We are well on the road to becoming slaves to the algorithms with computers

taking more than some tough choices out of our hands if we let them.

God forbid that some form of AI manages to become self-aware.

Such automated augury might be considered relatively harmless if its use is

confined to figuring out what products we might like to buy. But it is not going

to stop there.

Amazon Echo machine-learning services are both a powerful revenue generator that is going to remove us from any commitment to society or nature that sustains us all.

A low-cost, ubiquitous computer with all its brains in the cloud that you could interact with over voice—you speak to it, it speaks to you.

As companies build their vital machine-learning tools inside AWS, the likelihood that they will move to competing for cloud operations becomes ridiculously remote.

All technology programmers whether they are Algorithms for profit or otherwise should under Law be required to submit a verified copy of the program to be held in a virtual world strongroom, accessible to all ensuring transparency and accountability.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.