Society

People talk about the problem of artificial intelligence as the risk of AI entities thinking for themselves and acting against their human masters. That may be a problem, but I see a much more obvious one.

Every despot stays in power only so long as he can command violence or the threat of violence. Pushed too far there is always the risk that even the Imperial Guard will turn against the despot. History teaches us that many tyrants are poor judges of when the tipping point is near. But poor judges or not, tyrants are aware that there is a tipping point. Many will play with pushing things to the limit. But they are nonetheless aware the tide can turn against them.

And that knowledge curtails their worst excesses. Or if they push on regardless as some tyrants have done, then history teaches that that can bring on a revolution. Either way, behaviour is modified.

But take away the conscience from the Imperial Guard – replace it with robots – and there will be no end to tyranny.

I was in New Jersey in a supermarket looking for cheese and I couldn’t find it.

A man came out of the back, white coat, and hair swept back. He would have fitted right in with the Sopranos.

I asked him where the cheese was and he showed me, except what he showed me was the soft cheese. I said no, I was looking for hard cheese and he said “You mean cheddar and shit like that?”

The thing is he wasn’t swearing, he was just talking.

A man is mad, to a lesser or greater degree, when he doesn’t know what his own motivations are.

I don’t know what Hitler said about his motivations – whether he talked about it secretly with a few people who were in the know.

But I think Hitler’s motivation is pretty clear. Yet strangely, it seems it is not widely understood.

Historians talk about how Hitler targeted the Jews because he believed they were parasites. He read about eugenics and he communicated with people who specialised in racial profiling.

He talked about the need to conquer one’s own conscience so that one would be able to carry out the unpalatable but necessary job of getting rid of the Jews.

In fact the truth about his motivation is that he didn’t see conscience as something to be overcome. He revelled doing away with his conscience.

Getting rid of his conscience was an easy trick for him and it allowed him free rein to do what he wanted to do, which was to bring down unspeakable horror on people.

That is it, pure and simple, the beginning and the end. To me it is clear as the old adage, ‘follow the money’.

He chose the Jews because they kept going on about conscience and humility. They were a good candidate, but if not the Jews then some others – gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals.

As to whether Hitler was a little shit from his childhood, a little shit in the playground – or whether he was sent mad by war, I do not know. But by the time he was a developed adult he was a monster.

Can you imagine what it must have been like for a guard in one of the camps during World War II, caught in that horror? Unlike the prisoners, whose consciences were clear, the guards had to weave fantastical stories to enable themselves to live with the burden of guilt.

Of course, there were some sadists among the guards – perhaps more than a few. But other guards – what a trick Hitler played on them.

We are not fooled. When we think of labour-saving devices, we think not only of the benefits alone but also of the cost of the benefits. We think of the extra hours we have to work to pay for the labour-saving device. We know the hidden cost of labour-saving devices.

We think of the cost of upkeep, because most devices require some upkeep. And we think of the cost of replacing the device, because all devices have a limited life.

And we think of the stress and the pain and the tedium associated with getting the money to pay for the device. And we think of the precious time we have lost in getting to the point of being able to hand over the money to pay for the device.

And then we do it anyway.

But this calculation, this weighing in the balance,is not equal across the board. A rich man can buy a labour-saving device and not give a thought to the cost of it or of the upkeep. For him, labour-saving devices are what they seem. The only real cost to him is the sleepless nights wondering whether the poor are going to come knocking at his door to make him pay for being rich.