The age of driverless technology is dawning. Whilst companies such as Tesla are offering autopilot features, the world’s first driverless taxi cabs are emerging. The first to be made publicly available come from US start-up Cruise, who have been trialling with paying customers in San Francisco, before further rollouts.
The innovative service has received a large reaction and, although the company is confident about the safety of the service, reports, including from the BBC, have flagged up teething problems as the software is tested on real roads.
Whatever concerns there are for the safety or smoothness of the service, these are all short-term concerns likely to disappear as artificial intelligence (AI) technology continues to develop.
Envisioning the role that AI will play in the future of humanity inevitably lends itself to radical ideas. The rapid development of such technologies may well lead to innovative climate solutions that save human life as we know it, but there are concerns, especially when looking at the military applications, which, if allowed to develop without global regulation, could lead to catastrophes of Orwellian proportions.
It is therefore vital to question aspects of emerging AI technologies, and how they will shape our world. As machines continue to automate roles once filled by humans (whether it be driverless taxis or self-checkout machines in supermarkets), it is important to remember the long-term outcomes.
Cruise maintain that they are a force for good. The company’s mission statement, coming from its CEO, Kyle Vogt, states: “We don’t just have the potential to change the world for the better, we have a responsibility to improve it.” Whether ethical capitalism works is contentious, however, as human jobs become more replaceable the very fabric of capitalism is undermined.
There is a real threat that the rise of ‘unmanned’ businesses with skeleton staff will lead to even greater economic inequalities, as the jobs that once provided basic incomes for workers are obliterated. This would be made worse by a global tax system that allows profits to be relocated onto the balance sheets of tax havens, or low-tax nations, instead of where the services were used, further concentrating wealth into a smaller pool.
The results, should things be left unchanged, would be a potent combination for inequality, undermining the core principles of even the most Libertarian governments, as even the concept of trickle-down economics is destabilised.
This world is, of course, far off, and clearly the issues must be addressed as they arrive. However, the emphasis must be on how new technologies can improve humanity. To achieve this there will need to be radical changes to how governments view such companies. They must act as a custodian of a population’s needs, rather than a facilitator of the corporation’s sectional interests – ‘growth first’ objectives, centred around making countries an attractive proposition for businesses will not work in this regard.
Should machine automated industries become more prominent in the future, a universal income based on taxes levied from such companies would be essential to maintain the very fundamentals of capitalism; if those at the bottom do not have an income, the system breaks down.
The San Francisco experiment provides an early juncture in which to consider what we should want out of AI, and what it may mean for humanity. The results of how such technologies are implemented and treated will likely have a great impact on all our lives.
For more general information on AI and machine learning, go to: https://futureoflife.org/background/benefits-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/