Bernie Sanders and the Hobson’s Choice of AI

You seem decent Bernie but I am concerned.

I was surprised and delighted with Bernie Sanders until I wasn’t and I shouldn’t have been two of those three. I thought it admirable at least that a man of his age who had been betrayed by his fellow socialists so terribly was still fighting and changing. All of a sudden he had an epiphany and realised the logic of both capitalism and communism. The house wins, the machine is instantiated. But this has always been a great lie of Marxism. It claimed that the working man was the basis of the revolution. However the idea of the centrality of production must mean that the working man in a successful socialist system becomes a non-working man. We still have the Man in charge but it is now a godless Promethean bureaucrat. Marxism loves the hi-tech that destroys the human which is why some have shifted to nonsense luxury communism recently. The proletariat is a working man because the future paradise will work on him or her. Humans are mere accidents that will be integrated into the external world that defines them and worked upon. It is no different with Dawkins and his extended phenotype. You cut God and Christ out and you get Prometheus. AI is the materialist dream of liquid modernity.

They will make us an offer we cannot refuse. Take it or leave it. Take it or leave IT. It’s this or nothing. Like it or lump it. There are no strings attached only this net. It’s my information way or the information super highway. Hobsons’ Choice refers to a choice which is not a choice. Henry Ford said you could have any colour of the Model-T Ford as long as it is black. Hobson had horses and you had to take one nearest the door. It prefigured nicely the horseless wagon. If someone only wanted a white horse and the one near the door was black the purchase would not be a win. The stable doors were opened and machines came in. If someone who was against cars and for horses ran out of the Ford factory saying, the horses are definitely gone but at least I’ve managed to get a black horseless one, the victory for the horse lovers might seem pyrrhic at best to say the least. They might embellish the loss and say - now we can be quicker getting around to warn people about the dangers of the motor-car and the existential threat to horses. We are like those horses in the coming car world. You might think the solution come before Henry Ford or Samuel Colt sets up the production machine. No it’s done. It’s inevitable, they are merely deciding how to optimise it.

So I was listening to Bernie thinking he seems decent. Better late than never. Ok, Bernie you deserve a second chance. You spent your whole life peddling a myth about a working future. Now you admit it was spurious. Let me accept your bona fides. In your extensive decades (as you constantly remind us) you never copped on that hi-tech is an existential challenge. Ok. Then a cold chill comes over me. You begin to talk of Hinton. You made a monumental mistake in not paying attention to technology Bernie (like many more). So having done so, you now want to regulate it. This causes dissonance like someone who wants white but is given black. My question would be, why should anyone trust someone who has been so close and so wrong for so long? Call me suspicious. But here is the problem. Hinton is another guy who is great at one thing like a hedgehog but he missed everything else (more on that here). Though he presumably got well paid by powerful people to produce this existential Promethean danger, he never realised it. Bernie, you are going to take your hedgehogedness and join with another to capture the pack of foxes? We are getting two sociologically sightless men to direct the traffic on the superhighway. I am filled with confidence.

But it’s worse Bernie. Hinton is not only someone who was blind to what he was doing, he also wants to regulate. Bernie, he has no knowledge or experience of that game. It’s worse Bernie, he tells us that there is no God and humans are not special. It is not only that he supposedly missed the danger but he’s not the best person to regulate it and he does not seem to like people. He certainly does not seem to like God. I understand, he comes from a line of people that include a major mathematician and Marxist. It’s natural for him. So you made a monumental mistake, so did he, but we are to expect you putting your heads together to sort this out? By the way you are a materialist as well Bernie are you not?

Let me make it clear. Regulation is required but what is proposed is most likely the instantiation of a new total-tech governance system – AI-Govnerveance. When AI people are leading the way we are in trouble. All the tech-moguls want ‘regulation.’ You will get huge incomprehensible piles of text produced by legal firms and intelligence agencies and in the end it will suit the mono-revolution. This is the new world Bernie. Here is the real choice observers will notice. Either you are genuine but ill-prepared or you are on the same side. Your curious lack of awareness (like Hinton) your materialist worldview (like Hinton) and you regulation solution (like Hinton) worries me. Nasty moves diddled you before Bernie, but this is the future of our species. If you had not mentioned him, I would have been happy.

I might be wrong. It might instead be a Catch 22, dilemma or false dilemma and so on. But it seems that in the end you get AI. It seems that in the end you must deal with AI. It seems that in the end AI will come into your body. It seems that in the end humanity will end. AI-Posthumanism is the way and that is a horse of a different colour when you get your digital collar. Bernie, call me old-fashioned even a Luddite, but I’m sticking with the man on the donkey that came into Jerusalem and not those who come on aircraft carriers falsely in His name. They are the same ones that are rolling out the AI. There is a trap and remember there are many liars about and false prophets.

You campaigned on A Future to Believe In and talked about a revolution but it seemed the revolution passed you out and your future was not one to be believed in or rather you believed in a future that was not true. Already. Maybe you can understand why believing in God and the Incarnation is not such a bad bet.