Artificial Immigrants

Or how AI is all-round terrible language plus a bit more

The other day it was getting tiring and over-heating my brain posting antifascist comments. Today… well, it’s more of the same, but with an AI hype focus.

I cannot believe how stupid Geoffrey Hinton, Sam Altman and the other tech bros are. But I am sure some of them have method in their madness. At least Hinton, while an enabler, is not in that category, he seems genuinely concerned. But his concern is horribly misplaced. The real concern is about economic power & control. Hinton is just lame. There was a good interview E.J. Eskow had with similar themes with Anita Chan. By the way, Anita is YAASE — Yet-Another Anthropologist Smarter than Economists.

Why can I honestly comment that “Hinton spouts such garbage”? One reason is that he (like every other Skinnerian behaviourist) is attributing not just computational agency to algorithms running on hardware (that can be turned off with an evil device called a “switch”) but also mental/sentient agency intention and “evil”. This is seriously wrong. I mean damaging to social discourse wrong, and also politically wrong, and also scientifically wrong.¹

The only things capable of “evil” are souls. Physics is neither evil nor not evil.

And Evil is not an absolute concept. There is no such such thing. There are grades of actions that are less good than others. And there are people who in their weaker or more debased moments act at one extreme end relative to others.

(For the philosophy nerds: I believe in Absolutes for sure, why not? Platonic reality acknowledgement is pretty darned effective for discovery and explanation, also I am a “math bro”. However, Absolutes are not always consistent notions. There is a simple logic for relative grades of ethics and morals, which is pretty interesting (and has a number theoretic model). Turns out there can be Absolute Good, but it is logically incompatible with Absolute Evil. But one can switch that relational logic around without an inconsistency. So either Theism is true or Satanism is true. Both cannot be true.)

Back to the topic (immigration coming up, don’t you worry).

Anita Chan. Data decolonialist. Not a half bad immigrant to the USA. One of the immigrants not jealous of illegal immigrants. She knows California sweet navel oranges do not grow themselves.

If you still fear that machines can somehow gain subjective qualia and human-like sentience, well I’m sorry for you, but this should still not distract from the far more obvious threat to the working class, which is the power & control over data and media which an increasingly fewer privileged are gaining. There is no point waiting for a few class traitors from the ranks of the lesser tech bros to gain sufficient jealousy in order to unravel this technocracy dystopia. We all can help unravel their neo-fascist power. There are thousands of ways you can help. Every little bit helps. Quit Twitter for one. Facebook also, in case you are still a Boomer. Don’t buy the Teslas. Lobby government to stop subsidizing SpaceX. Pay the book dealers/merchants directly, don’t order with Amazon. Who the hell cares about an extra week shipping delay? Bike to work if you are fit, or walk, and if your boss complains you are always late (or leaving “too early” — whatever the hell that means!) — I want to recommend something witty, but just ignore that boss, he is not worth your stress. Puny action, but not if hundreds of millions participate. We used to live fine and have great social relations without Twitter. We are never gonna miss it. Do not give the neo-fascists your data.

Also, when you are able, please support legitimate debt strikes and rent strikes. The banks will not suffer. The rentiers need to be euthanized. Don’t be a Soccer Mum or NASCAR Dad about those acts of civil disobedience. Both creditor and debtor are in sin. In case you forgot. I don’t know if the clergy ever taught you this, if you ever had the misfortune of being clergied (if so, my condolences), but the sin is not the bad thing, the lack of forgiveness is the bad thing. You are supposed to extinguish the debts. If your government does not give you the means to do so in their scorepoints then they are the sinners, not you.

Free the immigrants, but also free the software. One of these you can do sitting on your 🅰🅢🆂.

Another action that is simple (taking several arduous hours of sitting on your laptop) you can “do at home” which I recommend would be to make the effort to stop using Apple Inc and Micro$oft Inc. products. GNU+Linux is a free-libre alternative and not all that hard to migrate too. Do you prefer convenience of familiarity over giving a middle finger to neo-fascists?²

(Bit harsh to say Micro$oft and Apple Inc are fascist? I think not. Go back and check out Anita Chan’s book. At this stage of late stage capitalism I do not much care for these particular grammarian nuances. Apple Inc are fascists in my dictionary, and Steve Jobs was a 𖧳𖧥𖨚𖢧𖧥𖦪𖦧.)

Back to the Thinking Machines. Is Dune a CIA psyop? Just jokin’. But seriously, the back story which enabled Herbert to write Dune mythology is complete madness. Forgivable, since every epic SciFi fantasy making a political point probably needs some heavy unreality. If you do not have Biblical scale epic tragedy then you only have Bill Mitchell’s blog, which is merely lowercase biblical epic tragedy for real in our lifetimes. A significant downgrade. Dickensian reality. And… well… that’s still too depressing to contemplate, right? Knowing MMT is bad for your mental health. There should be a mental health warning before every MMT macroeconomics course:

“We advise living in ignorance could be bliss.”

😢 Some of us just couldn’t resist taking the M pill. Even when we know we are prone to depression and anxiety.

What’s the antidote for taking the I-me-me-me pill? It is collective action and collective knowledge. A well-informed individual can get depressed to the point of suicide. A well-informed society of the Many can conquer that depression of the One.

What was I writing?

So, yeah, Thinking Machines are not the problem, the thinking people who do not think are the problem. You do not have to know what a “soul” is for this comprehension you only have to be one, it is a spiritual understanding, beyond physical sciences. I, for one, have no idea what a “soul” is in essence. I reckon I do know what I need to fear though.

The only fear we need have of machines is the people with degenerate souls who seek to monopoly control them.

I have no fear of machines per se which our governments whom we should democratically control, could, if they chose, shut off at the electricity supply. You have to live in a SciFi fantasy to suppose a SkyNet can defeat an electrical engineer with a (decent) soul and a few sneaky software and (undocumented?🤫) hardware back doors.

The fear I absolutely do not have is AI causing mass unemployment. If we do see a massive rise in the precariat it will be no fault of any automation. It will be the fault of entities with souls — politicians and their rotten advisors who have no understanding of the cause of all unemployment.

Before I finish off with the unemployment story, how about this Artificial Immigration story?

It is closely related. When people move in order to work so they can eat, is this “immigration”? What is crossing a human-imposed map boundary? It is just movement across some geographic terrain. No one should “own” the Earth we live on. Governments should be stewards, not gate-keepers. I am not opposed to the Nation-State, it is a decent organizing principle. But there are nice ways to go about organization and some very rotten ways.

Our people are our most valuable resources. If the Trumpistas export their immigrant labour back to their homes, the USA loses. (Now… if only Mexico could realize they are the winners!) Exports are your real cost. Imports your real benefit. But when that’s human workers the moral hazard triples (or more!)

Even when the cold-hearted econs get into the policy circle here, we can still see the immigration story playing in the media is backwards. Are orange orchard prices going to jump in mark-up because the California workers are being deported? I think so! If not, then some Orange growers will have automated the juice out of their orchards somehow.

The automation of oranges would be a great thing however. Bring on the Star Trek synthesizers. The loss of migrant workers a bad thing. The two can be decoupled. Anyone wanting to work in the USA — firstly, God help them!, secondly, the US government can always employ them for public purpose, rather then leaving them under precarious illegal status working for capitalist farmers (that means corporate farming in my book, not necessarily a family farm). They could be employed to work relaxed hours in wonderful community gardens, growing sustainable produce. Or not… they could be employed in any work where their skills are valuable, or even not so skilled. Almost all people get trained on-the-job. And this too at decent living wages. No inflation.

This is all true regardless of the mode of production³, it could be capitalist or socialist or otherwise (dumb-dumb EU unelected technocracy), provided the economy is a single-currency region the political choice is whether to employ all willing labour the tax liabilities caused to be unemployed, or not and leave wasted human lives and generational poverty and subsequent social pathologies.

The inflation arises when the immigrants are deported. Agent Orange⁴ seems to not comprehend.

The AI damage occurs when tech bros snort the cocaine. This one Agent Orange does comprehend, and enables.

1. I do not much care if you believe machines can be conscious (except to worry & care for your intellectual competence), the fact is, we can still turn them off at the wall switch. And turn them on again when handy, without requiring to impute “pain” qualia to their circuits.

2. I have had people complain to me it is too much bother to migrate to GNU+Linux. I do not have a witty come-back for this, it is too mindless and gives me a kind of spiritual dread for these people — they may truly be Chalmers Zombies.

3. The mode of production has other consequences. In case Grumbine is reading — dude, I know the capitalist mode of production is wretched.

4. That CNN article on Tariffman is full of bs too, btw. The tax (tariff, or income tax, or otherwise) is not a “pay for”, and reducing the US Federal deficit is an act of economic criminal negligence. Someone please tell this and all future US POTUS’s that the US Federal deficit is — by accounting identity — all the non-government sector savings of US dollars. He wants to destroy private wealth holdings for no good reason except “spreadsheet balance”? I am sure he doesn’t but that’s what reducing the US Federal debt does.