The next threat? Or more of the same. Only worse..

Viewed from a Resource Based Economy perspective, Artificial Intelligence isn’t really such a big deal. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a big deal. It may be the biggest deal yet. But we see it as simply another leveraging tool, the next in a sequence that roughly began with language, then writing and onto printing. Next was audio, then pictures, then the internet. More recently still, Social Media. And now AI.

As conventional observers scramble to read the tea leaves and be the first to interpret the likely implications, we at NZIRBE are getting that deja vu feeling. Haven’t we seen it all before. Isn’t AI simply another tool. A very powerful one, possibly the most powerful tool ever.

The keystone perspective in all this, in all these tool developments over history, is acknowledging who wields the tools. And all the time, at every stage, the regular pundits cry for regulation, control, shared access and so on. All the time missing the fundamental point. That as long as we base our societies and economies upon adversarial, competitive systems, ie. money, then whatever leverage is available will be wielded most effectively by the most psychopathic and exploitive. As we witness with all that have gone thus far. Once we move beyond currencies, then these tools will be controlled automatically by the people.

AI could be amazing for humanity. Just like the printing press, vaccines or dynamite, in the right hands they can be life saving game-changers. ? In the wrong hands, not so flash.