We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
The geopolitics of AI
First is disinformation. We know that AI bots can be very confident and they're also frequently very wrong. And if you can no longer discern an AI bot from a human being in text and very soon in audio and in videos, then that means that you can no longer discern truth from falsehood. And that is not good news for democracies. It's actually good news for authoritarian countries that deploy artificial intelligence for their own political stability and benefit. But in a country like the United States or Canada or Europe or Japan, it's much more deeply corrosive. And I think that this is an area that unless we are able to put very clear labeling and restrictions on what is AI and what is not AI, we're going to be in very serious trouble in terms of the erosion of our institutions much faster than anything we've seen through social media or through cable news or through any of the other challenges that we've had in the information space.
Secondly, and relatedly, is proliferation. Proliferation of AI technologies by either bad actors or by tinkerers that don't have the knowledge and are indifferent to the chaos that they may sow. We today are in an environment with about a hundred human beings that have both the knowledge and the technology to deploy a smallpox virus. Don't do that, right? But very soon with AI, those numbers are going way up. And not just in terms of the creation of new dangerous viruses or lethal autonomous drones, but also in their ability to write malware and deploy it to take money from people or to destroy institutions or to undermine an election. All of these things in the hands not just of a small number of governments, but individuals that have a laptop and a little bit of programming skill is going to make it a lot harder to effectively respond. We saw some of this with the cyber, offensive cyber scare, which then of course created a lot of security and big industries around that to respond and lots of costs. That's what we're going to see with AI, but in every field.
Then you have the displacement risk. A lot of people have talked about this. It's a whole bunch of people that no longer have productive jobs because AI replaces them. I'm not particularly worried about this in the macro setting, in the sense that I believe that the number of jobs that will be created, new jobs, many of which we can't even think about right now, as well as the number of existing jobs that become much more productive because they are using AI effectively, will outweigh the jobs that are lost through artificial intelligence. But they're going to happen at the same time. And unless you have policies in place that help retrain and also economically just take care of the people that are displaced in the nearest-term, those people get angrier. Those people become much more supportive of anti-establishment politicians. They become much angrier and feel like their existing political leaders are illegitimate. We've seen this through free trade and hollowing out of middle classes. We've seen it through automation and robotics. It's going to be a lot faster, a lot broader with AI.
And then finally, and the one that I worry about the most and it doesn't get enough attention, is the replacement risk. The fact that so many human beings will replace relationships they have with other human beings. They'll replace them with AI. And they may be doing this knowledgeably, they may be doing this without knowledge. But, I mean, certainly I see how much in early-stage AI bots’ people are developing actual relationships with these things, particularly young people. And we as humans need communities and families and parents that care about us and take care about us to become social adaptable animals.
And when that's happening through artificial intelligence that not only doesn't care about us, but also doesn't have human beings as a principal interest, principle interest is the business model and the human beings are very much subsidiary and not necessarily aligned, that creates a lot of dysfunction. I fear that a level of dehumanization that could come very, very quickly, especially for young people through addictions and antisocial relationships with AI, which we'll then try to fix through AI bots that can do therapy, is a direction that we really don't want to head on this planet. We will be doing real-time experimentation on human beings. And we never do that with a new GMO food. We never do that with a new vaccine, even when we're facing a pandemic. We shouldn't be doing that with our brains, with our persons, with our souls. And I hope that that gets addressed real fast.
So anyway, that's a little bit for me and the geopolitics of AI, something I'm writing about, thinking about a lot these days. And I hope everyone's well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
- The transformative potential of artificial intelligence ›
- History Of Artificial Intelligence - GZERO Media ›
- Be more worried about artificial intelligence ›
- Larry Summers: Which jobs will AI replace? ›
- The AI power paradox: Rules for AI's power - GZERO Media ›
- Can we trust AI to tell the truth? - GZERO Media ›
US job growth slows for a fifth straight month, but labor market remains strong.
What We’re Watching: US jobs report & new China, Afghan energy extraction deal
Jobs report: US labor market remains strong
The Fed’s interest rate hikes, designed to battle inflation, have slowed US job growth for a fifth straight month. The American economy added 223,000 jobs in December, well below last year's peak of 714,000 in February but still above expectations of around 200,000. The December numbers put the monthly average for 2022 at 375,000. A slowdown has been in effect since last August, but the labor market is still hot: 4.5 million jobs were created last year, the second highest since 1940. Such resilience likely means more interest rate hikes are to be expected. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate hit a historic low of 3.5%. The leisure and hospitality industry saw the biggest job gains, followed by healthcare and construction, while retail, manufacturing, transportation, and warehousing saw the least. President Joe Biden said the historic job gains are giving American families more “breathing room” amid the “cost-of-living squeeze.”
China, Afghan energy extraction deal reached
The Taliban have signed their first energy extraction deal. A Chinese company has sealed a three-year, $540 million agreement with Afghanistan to drill and extract oil from the Amu Darya basin in the north. The deal spans three Afghan provinces and will create 3,000 jobs. No country officially recognizes the Taliban as Afghanistan’s government, and it has been globally criticized for its treatment of women. Yet, the Chinese have maintained and strengthened their diplomatic presence in the war-torn country, which sits atop an estimated $3 trillion of untapped oil and minerals. Beijing’s presence has been punished by the Islamic State, which attacked and injured several Chinese personnel in Kabul last month. But with tensions rising between Beijing’s erstwhile South Asian ally, Pakistan, and the Taliban, whose offshoots have stepped up their attacks on the nuclear-armed Islamic Republic, we’ll be watching to see whether the new oil deal might convince the Taliban to halt their support of terrorism.
Will AI Take Over Your Job: AI in 60 Seconds
Jobs that are repetitive are most at risk of being taken over by artificial intelligence.
It's AI in 60 Seconds with Kai-Fu Lee!