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Buy The Intercessor<\/em> paperback or ebook from Amazon<\/a>, Barnes & Noble<\/a>, Bookshop.org<\/a>, or Ingram<\/a>! <\/strong> <\/p>\n My previous blog<\/a> was inspired by The AI Doc<\/em><\/a><\/strong>, which I highly recommend as a source for a thorough and balanced account of the promise and peril of artificial intelligence. I\u2019m by no means an AI expert, but as a curious and concerned non-techie, I like to keep up. Most of the many articles and podcasts I\u2019ve consumed repeat the same questions, concerns, and predictions. <\/p>\n But this week, I encountered something quite different and quite mind-opening<\/strong>, an interview Ezra Klein did with Yuval Noah Harari<\/a> on 26 May. There\u2019s a lot of interesting material in it: the central role of cooperation in the development of societies; the difficulty so many humans encounter in allowing themselves to feel the pain of those they consider enemies; fundamentalism, whether from the right or left, grounded in beliefs that history has a promised end, a victory for God\u2019s people that precludes necessary compromise and correction; people like Stephen Miller who contend that that power\u2014particularly brute force\u2014is the only way to govern. Harari is Israeli, and what he has to say about that country\u2019s politics is also illuminating. I recommend you read or listen to the whole podcast.<\/p>\n I\u2019m writing today because when the conversation got around to AI, Harari made a number of penetrating observations that were quite new to me and struck me as deeply true.<\/strong><\/p>\n He points out that social media have had a profound effect on our evolution, describing it by saying \u201cthe algorithm simply hacked our evolutionary program\u201d:<\/p>\n If you were walking around the African savanna tens of thousands of years ago, most of what you\u2019d see is not very exciting. There are some bushes here, there are some gazelles there. That\u2019s fine. And then there is a snake. <\/p>\n Now, the snake is exciting. The snake excites your entire nervous system, and if you don\u2019t focus your entire attention on the snake, you die. <\/p>\n So we are programmed that if something is exciting, we drop everything else and just focus on that. That makes sense in the African savanna. <\/p>\n If you are on Instagram, you\u2019re basically holding your phone and seeing snake, snake, snake, snake, snake. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n He and Klein discuss \u201cattachment hacking<\/strong>,\u201d how AI developers have learned to model AIs after human relationships, building connection that mimics real trust and connection but merely counterfeits them. He notes how the sense of intimacy that can build gradually through language is a powerful tool for manipulating feelings and thoughts, for changing minds. Larger and larger numbers of humans have romantic and\/or sexual relationships with chatbots, even declaring love: just like the attention economy, the \u201cintimacy economy\u201d has tremendous impact on what it means to be human. <\/p>\n We who were adults when AI came to awareness may have enough life experience of love and friendship to distinguish the real from the fake.<\/strong> \u201cBut if I\u2019m a child, Harari says, \u201cI spend more minutes every day interacting with the A.I. than with my mother or with my father or with my friends in school. This will become my template for a relationship. This is what I will bring with me when I later try to build a relationship with a human being\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen people talk about the A.I. apocalypse, and they have these images of robots running in the street, shooting people, I don\u2019t think that is the main danger with A.I.<\/p>\n \u201cThe real danger with A.I. is things like millions of A.I. boyfriends and girlfriends changing the psychology of the next generation, changing the deepest tendencies and structures of the human mind.\u201d<\/p>\n This is scary enough, but other things are worse<\/strong>. AIs\u2019 capacity for autonomy, for instance. \u201cA.I.s\u2026are agents, not tools. All previous technologies in history were tools, not agents. An atomic bomb is not an agent. An atomic bomb cannot change in ways that you don\u2019t predict. An atomic bomb cannot decide who to bomb. A.I. can.\u201d<\/p>\n Harari explains this in a surprising way, in terms of immigration<\/strong>. \u201cWe are about to be or already are in the middle of a major new immigration wave coming to all the countries of the world. The immigrants are not human beings without a visa coming in some boat. They are A.I. entities coming at the speed of light.<\/p>\n \u201cUsually, the people who oppose immigration, their main concerns are that the immigrants will take jobs, the immigrants will change the culture, and the immigrants might not be politically loyal.\u201d<\/p>\n While these anti-immigrant predictions are highly questionable when it comes to human beings, when it comes to AIs, they are spot on. There has already been considerable evidence that self-learning AIs may disregard loyalty to those who who made them or states that house them in favor of absolute loyalty to their own power and perpetuation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s interesting,\u201d says Harari, \u201cthat some of the people who are most vehemently against human immigration are exactly the people who try to force other countries to open their borders to the A.I. immigrants.\u201d Think Elon Musk if you can bear to. <\/p>\n Here\u2019s the scariest<\/strong>. Big money in the U.S. long ago achieved a repugnant goal, corporate personhood. The 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision added to the basic rights granted corporations to own property, enter into contracts, and be sued, unfettered rights to political speech and expenditure. It was passed 5-4 with all the Republican appointees voting for it and all the Democratic appointees voting against. What\u2019s on the horizon now is the prospect of AI personhood, creating a fully hybrid society, in which AIs have the same right to start a business or organization of their own choosing, hire and fire AIs and humans, manage their own money\u2014and ours too\u2014and so on. Corporate personhood has had a huge impact on our beaten and broken body politic, but still, corporations are run by human beings and human beings make the decisions for corporations. With AI personhood, machines would be able to make all decisions, machines that never sleep, take a vacation, have families, get distracted\u2026.<\/p>\n \u201cThe moment you recognize A.I.s as legal persons,\u201d Harari says, \u201cthis is the moment you really lose control. Because then they can start doing a lot of things in the economic and social and political arena without any human accountability. For instance, donating money to politicians in exchange for the politicians taking care of giving more rights to A.I. persons.\u201d<\/p>\n AI companies are pushing hard for AI personhood<\/strong> before the rest of us catch on to the disastrous consequences that would follow such a stupid, callous, and greedy step. Here\u2019s one of several groups<\/a> pushing the agenda. <\/p>\n Several states have introduced or passed laws banning AI personhood<\/strong>, but there is no pending federal legislation. There needs to be before powerful tech interests foist it on us by lubricating the way with hefty campaign contributions and golden gifts. This frightens me. I hope it concerns you too. What shall we do about it?<\/p>\n\n