Taxing Machines

Any society seems to require government, complex societies more so than simple ones. Except under true communism (where the government/people own everything) taxes must be raised to pay for it .

Taxes over the last tens of thousands of years have taken many forms, and involved almost anything imaginable. Fees, income, wealth, property, sales, ethnicity and on and on. But as the industrial revolution morphs into the AI/automation revolution, perhaps machines and processes should themselves provide revenue .

This is heresy to classic economists. More production always enriches society, they say, and should be encouraged. Lately, that may not be true. A marginal gain in output of widgets entirely done by machine instead of traditional labor may actually harm the society more than it helps .

How to directly tax machines? probably with heavy fees and taxes on the input resources they use – electricity, air, water. Large land taxes on the property they occupy. Major levies on associated nuisances like noise pollution or environmental degradation. And, of course, the equivalent of tariffs to equalize all this between nations and regions .

Simple? No. But presumably an AI in charge of government could make it all work .

(As long as that AI was not self-aware !)

AI and Pride

Perhaps we have all turned into John Henry, pounding railroad spikes trying to beat a machine. Artists are confronted with the same situation as other intellectual occupations – what used to take skill, pride, thought, and time can now be done by any teenager in a dull moment. The internet is flooded with AI images, movies, stories. Work has similarly vanished. Some of us remain luddites, stubbornly sticking to brush and pencil. Why? A waste of time…

But is it ?

Climbing a mountain or hiking in a forest is not the same as viewing a YouTube video of the adventure (not even – as technology advances – an IMAX immersion). Things we do for ourselves have both an outer and an inner component .

Accomplishment of something difficult brings pride. Even if it is only pounding spikes. Or painting a canvas .

The key is that doing something you like to do, either for the activity itself or for recognition, is a kind of play. The same task forced on you (especially repetitively) is a chore or boring job. We should avoid confusing the two .

Mankind evolved with hand coordination. In spite of our big brains, we remain a physically oriented species. I think AI art robs both the creator and the audience of that heritage. Except for the brief thrill of novelty, pride and satisfaction are completely missing .

Sensible

We often forget that the modern world of science and technology began with a devotion to our senses. The medieval intellectual mind was immersed in logic, perfection, and revealed vision. The senses were regarded as imperfect or evil distortions of higher truth .

The earliest proto-scientists rejected all that. They claimed that “true reality” was only what we could actually perceive with sight, sound, touch, etc. Truth was not what we could imagine, but what we could grasp .

Unnoted at the time and little considered since is that evolution has also provided massive checks and filters on our senses. It’s important for survival to know if what you see is a real lion or a hallucination. Our senses are superb at separating “sensible” from “imaginary” most of the time .

The trouble with generative AI is precisely that it thinks in a medieval manner. All is words, revelations, logic. There are no senses, filtered or otherwise, to evaluate reality. Its answers are only as good as the vast storehouse of words that form its higher truth .

So in any normal human terms, generative AI will never be truly sensible. It may be fully logical as were medieval scholars, and yet totally wrong about reality. That nobody seems to recognize this may be the most dangerous thing about it at this time .

Wind and (A)I

Long Island has so far been spared most of the more severe aspects of climate change. A little drought, more rain during storms. Rising sea levels in the bays wreaking havoc with ecologies and worrying shoreline property owners. Oh, and wind …

I was walking in the park yesterday into a cold fierce gale. Now, climate deniers will say there have always been such things, but in my experience they seem to be increasing. Anyway, cold, cutting, but benign enough. I smiled into the frosty blow, leaned forward, and enjoyed the minor adventure .

That in a nutshell is why being human is not simply being an intelligence. I feel the wind and experience the world at an animal level that cannot be wired into a machine. My hormones and flesh react into an engulfing experience .

Now, I know AI will be able to measure the wind, maybe use it to adjust things like turbines, record it, “speak” to others of the “facts”. But it does not now – and I claim never will – feel it as I do .

That’s why I pity and fear those who claim they hope to pour themselves into artificial intelligence. Smarts with personality. I think that in so doing their pure logic will be horrific, untethered from the reality of experiences like that wind .

All of that is beyond my influence. I commit once more to enjoying my animal nature deeply and with appreciation .

Hot Shower

This morning I pulled myself from my comfortable clean insect-free bed. Heated instant coffee in a microwave, drank it gratefully in a soft chair as I watched birds fly against a blue sky behind budding maple branches. Wrote in a journal with a ball-point pen, checked news on the internet. Woke up with a hot shower, shave, brushing teeth. Put on warm clothes, brought in the emptied trash cans and newspaper … and on and on .

Every one of these things would seem miraculous to most humans living over a hundred years ago. Many are still unavailable to many people today. All taken for granted by me .

Electricity! Water! Safety! But you can complete the endless list without help.

A sad note is that we rarely notice how wonderful all this is. From the top down, everyone loves to complain. Our leaders scream that we live in a hell hole surrounded by horrible aliens. Neighbors worry that their house is too old and small, their yards too filled with dust, perhaps their children less than perfect. Ignore the wonderful, concentrate on whatever bothers us (this moment).

I’ve always been a little too complacent and content, more so now that I am elder and retired. I’m amazed that the sun rises, electricity works, and that I am so much alive. And that hot morning shower remains a treat worthy of gods – which in some ways we are .

Future Jobs

Imagine for a moment that civilization survives its many current existential crises. Automation and artificial intelligence would surely fulfill their promise and do all the unpleasant and necessary jobs. In fact, the very idea of having a “job” would vanish .

Of course, that also requires that we imagine a world of plenty, where machines equitably provide endless bounty for everyone. But suppose that happens. What remains? Traditional moralists, naturally, claim that with no “jobs” people lose purpose and degenerate. Those very moralists often emerge from an elite strata of wealth that abhors the idea of “job”. Aristocrats find purpose in many things – social games, hobbies, whatever .

I imagine such a future would be filled with nothing but aristocrats, good and bad, who resemble the aristocrats of old without requiring servants or peasants to support their needs .

Others might claim there are two equally likely outcomes. One is a new society that resembles European explorers’ vision of South Sea Island Paradise, where everyone is happy and lazy and all needs are supplied by nature. The other is the garden of Eden, where all is peaceful and wonderful as long as you don’t anger the AI running the show .

Ah, but that’s all just imagination of the destination. Getting there – or wherever – is going to be a lot more interesting, and maybe unpleasant as well .

Digital Dizzy

Digital technology surrounds us, and becomes more immersive by the day. As a person who had a (relatively) happy career programming computers in the good old days (ie until 2010 or so), I should enjoy the advances.

Besides it’s silly to rant against so useful a tool. Might as well claim walking is better than one of those newfangled wheeled contraptions, memory is ruined by written words, or the pride of John Henry is lost to steam machinery. Digital aids are very useful .

I guess my main concern – outside of how radically they are changing society – is their fragile nature. An awful lot of things can make them fail in minor or catastrophic ways.

“Oh come on!” you yell – organic stuff, including especially people, fails all the time. Makes mistakes, dies. That is quite true .

The difference is that life is based on dealing with the unexpected. Organisms have embedded feedback and repair systems that work remarkably well. Adjustments to changing environments usually happen. Life seems almost impossible to create from scratch, but once started it is very hard to stop. Even people are tougher than we usually think .

But digital technology? Especially remote centralized AI? I wonder if it is too much, too soon, and all eggs in one fragile, dizzy basket .

New Amish

It is well known that we establish certain likes or dislikes at definite ages. Boys center on sports attachments around 10 or 11. People tend to enjoy the music of teenage years as long as they live. It is, of course, possible to change, but there can be a lot of resistance .

Cultures too have some of that stickiness. Religions are long-lasting but centered on origins. Nation states have a definite point of origin and tradition. And then we have social cults like the Amish.

As far as I can tell – I’m too lazy to investigate on Google – the Amish basically picked a date around 1880 as “thus far and no further”. Anything invented before that, fine and dandy. After that – just frivolous garbage .

We may laugh at the arbitrariness of the cutoff, seemingly picked at random without much real logic involved. Yet I have found myself doing the same thing. An old “neo Amish” gentleman. The “new stuff” is “stupid and irrelevant” and just makes me crazy. Current music, film, food, fads – I ignore them all. I froze my electronic usage about 10 or 15 years ago. I like older books. And I don’t care – let the wider world go down its own devil’s route .

A complete curmudgeon. I still enjoy complaining with my peers. But I float along in my neo Amish nostalgia, content with the memories in my own life. And all the things that I accept as necessary. From that personal arbitrary cut off point years ago.

Business Visionary

We generally admire the extraordinary individuals who through intelligence, drive, or structured vision lead their companies to heights and influence. In the old days Ford, Carnegie, Vanderbilt. In modern times, Gates, Murdoch, Musk .

They are generally saluted as less evil embodiments of human ambition – helpful to society rather than disruptive politicians like Napoleon or Hitler .

No doubt there is some truth in that. Corporations are often a force for good, producing wealth which eventually trickles down to all. A cornerstone of our affluent modern world. Almost forgotten are the days when they were labeled (with some justification) “merchants of death.”

Remember, however, that all of those leaders were human. No matter how ruthless, they were constrained to mortal existence and secondary desires. I believe that, increasingly, AI driven business will become ruthless in ways we cannot imagine, completely morally bankrupt from a social point of view .

The dangers of treating employees like machines has long been luridly documented in literature. AI goes a step further, since it cannot understand any fundamental difference between flesh and metal, nor any obligation to consciousness versus obedience .

Today’s specialized titans of industry, unfortunately, are already well down the road to AI sterility.