Is AI fear mongering just a new version of psychological conditioning?

It's time to toss AI onto the big pile of problems that Americans worry about constantly but do nothing to fix.

If you are new to The Owner’s Guide to the Future, here’s a warm welcome! This newsletter consists of occasional articles about the forces that will define our future. My goal is to consider how these forces are likely to change the world we live in, and how to be prepared. You will find my series on the Deep Weirdness of Artificial Intelligence here. And my series on the first organized labor strike against artificial intelligence here.

This week I will pivot away from the Writers Guild strike to consider some broader implications of consumer-facing artificial intelligence apps.

Let’s turn our attention to the vague-but-dire warnings about the dangers of runaway AI. 

Today, paranoid warnings about the perils of technology are not issued by the Ted Kaczynski-style nutcases who fulminate on the fringes of society; instead they come straight from the technologists who play a leading role in the deployment of artificial intelligence.

Yesterday morning, 350 tech executives, AI researchers and computer scientists issued a warning that artificial intelligence systems present an existential threat to humanity. 

It is a short statement that reads in its entirety:

Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.

That’s it. That’s the whole message.

What’s missing?  For starters, how about a fuller explanation of precisely how AI might lead to species-level extinction for humanity? Second, it wouldn’t hurt to add some detail about an action plan for mitigating this risk. Third, some indication that governments recognize the magnitude of this risk and are prepared to do something about it. 

Instead, crickets.

But that’s not all. Readers are left to ponder why, if these technologists feel so strongly that AI presents a clear and present danger, do they persist in deploying AI?  

“If we keep sawing at the tree branch that we’re sitting on, it could cause a big catastrophe!” Just stop sawing.

It’s no small puzzle that the people ringing the alarm bell the loudest happen to be in charge of the companies that are engaged in an intense AI arms race. 

Signatories include the CEOs of OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, Stability AI, Inflection AI, along with the CTOs, COOs, board members, co-founders, and chief scientists from those firms as well as executives from Google, Microsoft, and a host of other AI firms, plus a who’s who of AI researchers from prestigious universities.

Today’s micro-statement follows the failed petition that argued weakly in favor of a 6 month moratorium on AI research. And the recent testimony to Congress about the urgent need to regulate AI. And public admission by the CEO of OpenAI that he is afraid of his own product.

This pattern of pearl-clutching by bigwigs begs the question, “If AI raises such grave concerns, why don’t you all stop working on it?”

Yesterday’s statement is maddeningly vague about what, exactly, the rest of us are supposed to do with this information. 

Why are they telling us this?

It’s irresponsible to pull the fire alarm if you’ve hidden the emergency exit. That’s how panic happens. Especially if your employees are busy setting the place alight.

Perhaps panic is the whole point.

Contained in this incident are all of the ingredients for particularly modern kind of mind control:  first, warn everyone about a vague but scary existential threat with no specified timeline and no way to identify it, then point to a leadership vacuum in government, and then grouse loudly that there is no consensus on what to do. 

This clears the way for hyperaggressive tech executives to proceed with no limitations or guardrails. They can say, “We warned the government but nobody stopped us.”

This stinks of political theater. Don’t expect them to welcome constructive suggestions from the populace. They may not be interested in hearing from you.

Anyone who is not a tech executive comes away feeling powerless. The advent of AI leaves many people feeling defensive, paralyzed by vague fear, gnawed by anxiety. These warnings don’t help. They make us feel even weaker.

Mind Control made easy

It’s not difficult to control entire populations if you have your hands on the right levers.

Attention is a big lever.  Fear is another one.

One unanticipated consequence of the dizzying ascent to hyperconnected digital society during the first two decades of the 21st century is that, today, anyone has the ability to broadcast a frightening message that can trigger panic and confusion.  

This is a superpower that can be — and routinely is — abused. 

“Anyone” in this context includes terror groups like ISIS, domestic terror groups, and nutty conspiracy fanatics like QAnon.

Well-intentioned technologists ought to know better.

The costs of abuse are real. Social media panic triggered flash selloffs of stocks, a run on banks that nearly destabilized the banking system and caused the collapse of three banks. In other nations, social media panic triggered riots, ethnic violence and genocide.

Governments are no better. Issuing terrorizing warnings about existential threats is a tool that has been poorly used and overused by the government, too.

Fear is an efficient means of control.

The overuse of public safety warnings is costly. We all pay a price, not only by growing numb to all sorts of threats that we probably should take more seriously; but also we have gradually become conditioned to live in a state of chronic low-level fear and anxiety about things we cannot control. In the process, we’ve grown cynical about the government’s ability to do anything constructive about it

Climate change. Inflation. The debt bomb. China. Wildfires. Floods. Ebola. Zika. West Nile. Poisoned baby formula. Mass shootings. Pandemics. Gangs. Police. Nuclear armageddon. Russia. Supply chain disruption. Crumbling infrastructure. Social Security imploding. Drought. Bomb cyclones. GMO. Vaccines. Gas stovetops.

On the right wing of American society (and in some European democracies), conservative voters have been exposed for decades to a range of entirely fictitious threats: non-existent immigrant rapists, wild accusations about teachers who groom students for underage sex, unproven allegations of mass scale voting fraud, irrational fear of Black Lives Matter, the mythical woke virus, Democrats who abuse children in pizza parlors, Jewish space lasers, and the War on Christmas! All of this on top of the usual bogeymen from Big Government, the UN, and George Soros.

Today’s modern conservative is no longer the brave cowboy of the Reagan era. Instead it’s a frightened coward who huddles, locked in his home, watching Fox News with a loaded AR-15 near the front door in case an errant delivery person rings the wrong doorbell.

Fear is the mind killer. It’s also an efficient way to exert control over a large number of people who might otherwise get original ideas.

It seems that we will soon add artificial intelligence to the growing pile of vaguely-defined existential threats that cause us chronic low-level stress but never enough to take meaningful action. 

If the current wave of AI fear mongering plays out the way the previous scares did, then we won’t do much to stop it, or even attempt to manage it. We’ll capitulate, retreating from the debate and allowing the loudmouths and bullies to dictate policy, the same way we mishandled gun violence, immigration, and climate strategy. 

It wasn’t always this way

In the previous era of one-to-many broadcasting via radio and network television from the 1920s through the 1980s, only two entities were permitted to interrupt our regularly-scheduled programming with dire warnings: local government or national government. 

Emergency broadcasts included solemn declarations of war, earnest messages of solace during economic depression, a report on the Berlin Crisis, and extreme weather alerts. And warnings about nuclear war.

It is right that the power to declare a national emergency should be exercised infrequently. Until recently, that was the case. That is why it retained potency. Because emergencies were rare, people took them seriously. Even if they did not entirely trust the government, people tended to heed the message.

It’s also worth noting that government backed up the warnings with meaningful action, including relief programs, national defense projects and recommended precautions. These steps were just as important as the warnings, because they demonstrated that somebody in charge had a plan. That reassured the public and restored optimism.

The public was also given instructions. “If you are concerned about this matter, here is what you can do at home.” A clear and easy-to-follow action plan confers agency upon the mass of listeners.  

Agency is the antidote to powerlessness and panic. But with AI, we’re being told that we have no agency. That it is an existential threat.

My advice: think twice before you swallow that pill.

The Era of Mass Fear and Social Conditioning

In the 21st century, government seems to have lost its grip on emergency messaging.  We get plenty of warnings, but no instructions about what steps to take.

Nobody seems to be in charge. How many US presidents have called upon Congress to deal with gun control?  How well has that worked out? 

Here in California, our phones occasionally light up with noisy Amber alerts, warning us to be aware of a white Chevy pickup truck that may be traveling northbound on the 5 freeway, but also reminding us never to interfere. Most of us get these alerts at home at night when we are at home watching TV. What are we meant to do with this startling information? There is no course of action. It’s just an alert, another unsubtle reminder that we live in a scary world.

Sometimes, as with the Covid-19 pandemic, we get contradictory and confusing instructions. No need for masks, no wait a minute, you must wear a mask to enter, scratch that, masks don’t do anything. Hang on, yes, they are effective!  Wear a mask!

(It didn’t help that President Trump was at war with his own cabinet and public health officials on Covid precautions, actively flouting the CDC’s precautions and mocking his top epidemiologists.)

The mixed messaging leaves the rest of us powerless, stuck in neutral. Waiting for instructions.

And that’s what causes panic. We are left to quake in fear at a vague but purportedly imminent threat. Nobody knows what to do or when the danger will arrive.

Some conclude that the government has no clue, and that no help will be forthcoming. This causes some to organize their own groups, like militias organized around dubious principles like personal sovereignty. This is fragmentation, the opposite of collective action at the national level, and the result is chaos that leads to violence.

This process began with the misleadingly-named “War on Terror” that followed the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. 

For more than a decade after that attack, we were kept in a state of constant fear by color-coded threat levels that always seemed to hover around the Orange and Red tiers. 

The post 9/11 airport security program was intentionally bureaucratic and devoid of personality. When you encountered Homeland Security, you were in the hands of the Federal Government, deprived of personal agency. Whatever action was taken by the federal government to protect the citizenry was, by necessity, secret and unpublicized. 

Mostly what we experienced during the War on Terror was the hassle of airport security,  obediently taking off our shoes and emptying our pockets before passing through metal detectors. Dump your water, take off your belt, remove your wrist watch. Obey orders, follow instructions, do not think for yourself. Don’t ask questions. If you see something, say something. 

It was impossible for most people to connect this mind-numbing conditioning to any tangible real-world benefit. Mainly what we experienced was delays and more expensive drinks inside the airport. Nobody felt safer. Most of us felt bullied.

The War on Terror also introduced mass-scale surveillance in the United States. We acquiesced without a fight. In any previous era, this kind of nationwide monitoring would have been anathema to conservatives and civil libertarians alike. But after 20 years, we’ve normalized it. Now we just proceed in our digital lives with the vague understanding that someone might be watching all the time. More conditioning.

In 2004, a friend from Scotland visited the US and remarked, “You’ve given away all the freedoms that people fought and died for. You gave them away without a fight or even an objection, just because your government told you to be frightened.”

No surprise then, that by the time of the C19 pandemic, a significant number of Americans had grown cynical about public safety. They refused to comply with government mandates. They opted for a minor rebellion against faceless bureaucrats. 

The Covid menace was genuine, but that fact failed to register with many Americans, some of whom ended up facedown on gurney in an emergency room with a ventilator tube stuck down their throats.

Under current circumstances, it is very difficult for a cynical nation to take seriously the dire warnings about the existential threat of AI. Especially when these warnings are framed in such broad, vague, undefined terms.

Instead of a public service, yesterday’s statement feels like one more round of charade, playacting drama in order to exact compliance. It feels like the beginning of a new cycle of psychological conditioning and learned helplessness.

No doubt there truly are grave dangers presented by artificial intelligence. But we are not being told about them. These dangers certainly include the unprecedented concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few technologists, the same people who are telling us to be afraid, very afraid. 

You do not need to accept the narrative that is being dictated. You still have agency. You still retain the ability to speak up and agitate for strict rules and hefty penalties and constraints on the companies that continue to press recklessly forward with the AI Arms Race, regardless of the consequences or the costs imposed on society.

You have a voice. And your thoughts about the advent of artificial intelligence are as valid as anyone else’s. Speak up.

In my next articles, I will consider what it means to work for an artificial intelligence, and I’ll turn my attention to some allegations of copyright infringement. I am considering writing about how to regulate AI, too. See you next week!