For more than a month, I have been mired in a dispute with Amazon over a payment issue related to my newly published collection of cartoons, “Unhinged USA.” I will spare you the tedious details but believe me when I say it is an issue that could be very easily resolved.
It has not been resolved, though, and I seem to be trapped in a Catch-22 situation. The several Amazon representatives I have talked with on the phone all agree the problem can be fixed, but they do not have the authority to fix it. They tell me the people who can fix it cannot be reached by phone and may only be contacted by email. I have, of course, done that repeatedly — and, repeatedly I am directed to do one of two things. The first option is not possible because Amazon’s website offers no way to do it and the other step, which I have done, does not seem to be recognized by the mysterious entity on the other end of the email chain.
Maybe there are real human beings keeping me in this infuriating loop, but I wonder if there may be some aspect of artificial intelligence involved, as well. Who knows? Maybe the real humans I did manage to speak with were not real after all.
This situation has made me think bleak thoughts about the future of humanity. Right now, with brick-and-mortar businesses struggling to survive, we all are increasingly at the mercy of huge corporations, such as Amazon, that can prove to be impenetrable and unsympathetic. How much worse will it be when there really are no humans involved, when artificial intelligence takes over commerce, work, education and nearly every aspect of our lives?
That day is coming. AI is developing so rapidly that the smartest people in the world are having a very hard time finding questions difficult enough to continue testing the limits of AI systems. Humans are already being outsmarted by AI, and yet, though there are compelling arguments in favor of taking a pause before empowering a vastly intelligent nonhuman entity, no one is pausing. The competition between the United States and China to build ever more powerful AI systems is, in fact, rapidly picking up pace.
Much sooner than we think, highly intelligent robots will be doing many of the jobs humans now do — not merely repetitive manufacturing tasks or housecleaning, but higher-skilled professions such as teaching, accounting and lawyering. That may sound as if we will all be liberated to sit in the park and play guitars and live off some regime of shared wealth, but the more likely reality is that many millions of people will be put out of work with little prospect of new employment and no way to support themselves in an economy that only rewards people like the tech titans and venture capitalists who created the brave new world of AI.
The worst-case scenario is that AI will become not only ominously powerful but will develop malevolent feelings against the pitiful humans who are superfluous to the future of the planet. In that case, the robots may kill most of us and keep a few survivors as house pets.
There is a slightly less terrifying scenario, of course. We could all merely get stuck in an infernal communications loop in which our robot overlords simply refuse to acknowledge we even exist.
See more of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
View other syndicated cartoonists at: st.news/cartoons
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