Megacorps are The AI

Megacorps are The AI

Millennials are The Heros

We all have been discussing the future of an AI dystopian world. Elon Musk, Hawkings, Bill Gates have all warned that we need to plan ahead and be prepared for when AIs no longer need humans because humans are simply not equals.

Friends. We have already passed that point. The AIs *are* the post-sovereign multinational corporations.

These corporations we have granted with human rights and protections. Yet, we have freed corporations of most forms of responsibility for their actions as we would with a human. Assault another human? (United) As long as it was written in the rules, then it is not a crime. It is simply the algorithm executing instructions. A human would go to prison.

Falsely imprison a human, a corporation may pay a fine. Poison or even kill a human? There are thousands of cases where corporations have poisoned and/or killed humans and the result is years of denial and a small fine at the end.

When was the last time we executed a corporation? Dissolved their charter? Apple, Google, GE, et al. flagrantly defy the same tax laws that humans must pay and yet they are not only punished but held to a higher status than a typical human.

Sure, angry individual with an axe to grind might work on a super AI to shut down all the world's utility stations at the same time. But it is much more likely that corporations will develop more and more sophisticated algorithms to extract the very most efficient use of your labor, and every last bit of your consumption.

When you are no longer useful as labor or consumption, then they will figure out how to monetize your age and infirmity.

Or figure out how to imprison you to extract wealth from another human for your upkeep in prison. If none of that works, figure out how to have a war to extract wealth from both the humans paying for the bombs, and for the humans being bombed.

These are the AIs we should be worrying about. Not AIs that are going to turn us into silly batteries.

I am not saying capitalism is bad and socialism is good. That is too simple. I am saying that completely unchecked capitalism that is allowed to take on more power than normal humans is bad. And it has already happened and it is accelerating.

The United story is just an example. Incredibly, United recently did this to a First-Class full-paying customer as well. Look at Keystone, and private prisons - more African Americans are working for slave wages today in these prisons under dubious drug charges than at the height of the slave industry. All of these corporate goals are held far higher than the physical safety of humans. Let alone the ambition of can a human be equal (in status) to a corporation?

Look at our political class. Completely captured. A typical house election campaign costs about $2m, a typical senate about $10m. To absolutely own the outcome of legislation say you choose to buy 60% of the congress. 60 senate seats x $10m = $60m and ~ 250 house seats @ $2m = $560m to spend every two years. Or about $250m per year to absolutely own all legislation for the United States of America.

Who has that kind of money?

Apple *alone* has $250 billion in cash *overseas*. At a tepid return rate of 5%, they are earning $12.5 billon on the cash they have failed to pay taxes on.

Apple alone can buy our congress for the cost of 2 weeks of their interest on their cash.

That is too much power in that AI.

Obviously this is also true for the other fortune 10, 25 and 100. I am just picking on Apple because they are at the top.

What to do?

I do not know where to start exactly. But perhaps when a corporation harms or kills a human, there should be material consequences and not just fines. Perhaps they lose assets such as patents, or real-estate, or they are denied US market access for 7 years. Something very painful. These painful consequences should be for any action that we punish humans for - threat, assault, lying, fraud.

But more than that, culturally, we need to stop worshipping these billion dollar corporations as deserving more respect than humans. Not just silicon valley culture, but nation-wide and planet-wide these beasts are held up to be gods. Actually more powerful than any god we have worshipped before.

You can see me floundering for some sort of solution. But I see great strength rising up:

I see that millennials have already started this change in culture. First generation in American history (and first-world in general) to have reduced earnings compared to their parents. First generation to widely understand that they are witnessing one of the top 6 extinction events and that climate change is the fault of the greedy generations before them. First generation to have wide access to information and communication and rapidly understood that their elder generations will act obstructively to preserve their wealth at the expense of millennials and their children's ability to thrive.

With the explosive democratization of technology - information, communication, electronics, 3d printing, health, (yes even AI), I see a broad path of optimism. I believe the millennials will simply make their own stuff. When a corporation blackmails humans with $50,000 pharmaceuticals, millennials are creating their own generic meds, open sourcing it - and have videos teaching you how to make your own medication in the kitchen.

Millennials are creating automated, 3D-printed concrete and glass greenhouses with water efficiency 50x better than normal farms, with more growing cycles and no pests. They will produce so much food that the local farmer markets will be run simply on a donation model - take want you want, pay what you want. It will not matter - there will be more food than we have seen before. And great food. The martian colonists will be eating food created with these same greenhouses.

Millennials are rejecting the slavery of being in debt until their 40s with a shadow tax to the student loan industry. Millennials are already underway with online learning and in a generation they will break this yoke.

Millennials will not accept their only option to be a part-time slave to landlords seeking rents that consume 50% of their labor, or the banks with mortgages that eat the same 50%. Millennials will use the same 3D-printing technology and green energy tech, and create their own ultra-efficient, off the grid tiny homes and end their peasantry payments to exist.

Millennials will continue to break the traditions of how work is performed. They know that corporations have zero loyalty and will outsource their job to India at the end of a meeting. Millennials know that when employed they pay the bulk of the taxes in the nation with the regressive payroll taxes as well as income taxes. Perhaps, millennials will figure out how to turn themselves into micro corporations who earn their income overseas and treat themselves as a US-based cost center. There will be websites that will automate the corporate, legal and accounting structures to facilitate these personal inversions. Whatever the solution, they will not wait for Tax Reform fairy to do it for them.

Millennials will live anywhere in the world, perform their work on their own terms. Millennials will do all that above, and at the same time millennials will be the pioneers into colonizing space.

Millennials will figure out how to capture 200 ppm of CO2, they will make artificial beef delicious and ubiquitous so we can have juicy burgers without burning down the rainforests. They will replant these forests, save the whales and reefs as well.

Millennials will pay off our debts - social, financial, health, infrastructure and environmental.

All of my respect and appreciation for the work they are doing, and the work that they must still do.

Originally posted on Facebook on April 12, 2017.