Crowd of robots

The Social Contract 2.0: Sam Altman’s Open AI Radical Roadmap For Humanity

Are we heading to a dystopian future or we are there already without even realizing it? Once again, the AI’s Czar – Sam Altman – and his co-cohort seem to have the future all planned out for the rest of humanity. Albeit, he doesn’t require any of our consent to achieve his goals.

Altman – the CEO of OpenAI – was once again in the ire of the public for his statement or rather his expectation of what the advancement of AI will mean for the future of humanity.

He states –

over a long period of time, I still expect that there would be a change to the Social Contract, given how powerful we expect this technology to be. And the whole structure of society will be up for some degree of debate or reconfiguration.

If Mr Altman’s expectations become a reality, the future will be very different from what most of us will be remotely prepared for. It will be a future designed for him and his cronies to wield untold powers over peoples and nations.

What New Social Contract Does Sam Altman Expects?

The term “Social Contract” describes an agreement between individuals or groups that defines their rights and responsibilities.- the idea that people will give up their rights in exchange for the benefit of the society.

It is a term associated with the 18th Century Philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau. 

Gavel on the law books that regulate paper contracts to do business.

One may then ask what kind of changes Sam Altman refers to in the Social Contract. Who is giving up the rights and who is the one that will be benefiting the most from those rights?

The answers are obvious.  You lose rights to the big AI companies and they make fortunes from it until they eventually own you.

As far as losing your rights, that may have happened to a large extent but don’t just know it yet. OpenAI trained its model – and continues to do so – on the intellectual property of every website hosted on the internet.

They infringed on every copyright law you can think of. No permission was ever sought, and no compensation was given, to the millions of publishers they stole their data from. More insulting is the fact that they have the support of the Government.

End of Capitalism

The advancement of AI will be a problem for profit-oriented capitalism because it can reduce the value of human labor to basically nothing. It takes away jobs from humans by running them more efficiently.

Imagine a world where the labor of a thousand men can be done with few prompts from an advanced AI. Humans become expendable. There will be massive job losses. Unemployment rates will hit the roof. What then are we supposed to do if we don’t have our jobs? Bask in the sun and wait for AI companies for some hand-outs?

Those who own the AI companies will own the means of production and eventually wield absolute powers. They get to decide who gets what and how much. And since we have already “signed off”our rights for the advancement of AI, there will not be much in their way.

Universal Basic Income

The government will inevitably have to step in when AI takes all of our jobs. They will find a way to share some of the wealth of these AI companies. One of the more common proposals – which Sam Altman has himself alluded to in the past – will be the creation of a Universal Basic Income.

AI artificial intelligence concept - robot hand spelling out Open AI on blue computer motherboard

The idea is that you receive some basic stipends from the government/AI companies, to take care of your basic needs. Just enough so that you won’t starve.

You don’t work – because you don’t have a job anymore – but you do receive some basic stipends. It will create a two-class society. Those who own AI companies and those who receive whatever they choose to hand out.

Mass Surveillance

If you do not own anything or don’t own anything of value in the means of production, what will prevent the owners from controlling everything about you? To make sure you behave properly.

The easy way to do this will be mass surveillance. They will invariably create a dystopian society where Big Brother is always watching. They have much of your data already, they only need to dial it up a notch.

Let’s hope things never degenerate to these levels.

The time to start putting some guard rails to prevent the excesses of these AI companies was yesterday. We need to do more, to gain some control. Let the government start by enforcing the copyright laws.

See Deepseek Shutdown – AI Tech Wars or Real Privacy Concerns?

 

 

 

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