Choose Humanity
Back in 2017, I was a Journalism undergrad taking Philosophy of Mind as an elective to "broaden my horizons". It was a fascinating dive into theories of consciousness especially in humans and animals. Despite the frustration I felt in class, endlessly debating topics with no right or wrong answers, I was pleasantly surprised that I was doing well on the papers. After a semester of mental fatigue, I was excited to tackle the last and most important paper, which determined a major part of my grade. For this paper, I would need to apply all the theories I had learned, to take a critical position on artificial intelligence.
Now, like most undergrads in 2017, I had heard of the term and I was already interested in the digital divide (the subject of my undergrad substantive research), so I thought I could tackle this subject easy peasy. But one rabbit hole led to another and I found myself neck deep in theories with only a couple days to the deadline. I had tried for several days to build a coherent argument for or against artificial intelligence but I was drifting further and further from the shores of a proper paper. That, plus the stress of being in my final year, made the stakes of this and every other assignment so high. I couldn't afford to do what I'd allowed myself to do in other semesters. Take for example my 2nd year broadcast journalism class. For some reason I spent the entire semester getting 60s and 70s, till I finally figured out (through trial and error), where my mental block was and turned it around to get high 90s on the most heavily weighted assignments. That wouldn’t work this time though. I needed A's and I needed them now.
After a few days in limbo I decided to quit the books and academics and try to approach the question from another angle. I wanted to see what other people were saying about AI, hoping to maybe spark something. So I started watching YouTube videos about the subject. Ted talks, rants, explainers, news content - nothing was off limits. I was learning about the implications of AI for space travel, governance and security, justice, labour and yes there was the odd "robots taking over the world" video or two. But in that space I felt the subject come alive. Suddenly it wasn't some far-off weird science-fiction fable, but an actual present issue with real people behind it and real people who stand to be affected.
And that's where it got interesting. See, by the time I was graduating from university, I'd already spent 4 years in youth advocacy, creating media that platformed youth voices and drove attention to youth issues. Plus, my moral and intellectual compass was, at the time (and still now), heavily influenced by social movements and my experiences with the socio-political climate that Jamaica exists in as a small island in the Americas. My gut feelings and lived experiences and high school understanding of colonization, patriarchy/classism/colorism/racism and US interventionism, were given new weight with the Black Lives Matter, Arab Spring, Umbrella Revolutions and also the 2016 US presidential elections. These things shaped me into the people and planet first person I am, and I realized, that's what was missing from the theoretical analyses of artificial intelligence I had been reading. I didn't care whether or not a computer could play chess or whether I could tell it was a computer or not. Ex Machina (2014) is about as far as I was interested in taking that thought experiment. But people… people are important to me.
Source: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images via Slate.com
So I started approaching the question from that angle and suddenly I was finding scholars looking at power imbalances that would be deepened, the environmental cost of building and powering these machines, the death of privacy, the ballooning of capitalist interests and their growing influence over governments. The more I read, watched, listened to (yeah I even got podcasts in on this) the less excited I was about artificial intelligence. Until one day the question that would define the assignment and that continues to define my thinking on the matter occurred to me.
I was watching Nick Bostrum's Ted Talk - What happens when our computers get smarter than we are, and this is the comment I left under the video.
“I find it really interesting, and I mean interesting genuinely not sarcastically or ironically; how predominantly male, predominantly white, predominantly northern, predominantly wealthy/privileged first-world country living people can even think about creating super-intelligent beings and spend so much funding that, and then talk about values as a fail safe to those beings taking over the planet... when the mere fact that you privileged its creation over spending time, resources and energy making the world better, safer for its actual human constituents living in actual poverty, dying from curable diseases etc. means that you valued science and your own aims over humankind. Then you expect the machine to value you/us over its own aims? This is something that puzzles me. And I am not trolling or sjw-ing, I'm genuinely interested in how scientists would answer that question. P.S - I’m doing a Philosophy of Mind course at university and the answer might help me in my exams so please, don't refrain from responding.”
Source: Wikipedia
It's been three years since I wrote that and I still don't have an answer to that question, neither have I found an answer that actually works, and there aren't any clear answers in the comment section of that video either. I built my essay around that idea, collected my A and went on to graduate with honours, but the question has only gotten more and more urgent in my mind. It’s not just about artificial intelligence or tech, it’s about the story of humankind. Who are we? What are our values? What do we care about? Who do we care about?
We’ve witnessed great suffering over these last couple months as a result of Covid 19. There’s no telling when we’ll be able to heal the wounds left by the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people - whole families, beloved friends, colleagues and fellow strangers. Over the last few months the vast majority of people have demonstrated a collective humanity - an interest in other people’s well-being, a hope of minimizing spreading the disease. But some of us have not. From the mask and sanitizer hoarders, to the toilet paper battles - a selfishness has risen to the occasion. It’s clear, as it has always been, that some people will put their own needs first at all costs. We recognize this at the personal level, professional level, even the governmental level. We know what it looks like across history, because it’s a lesson we’re constantly being taught - a great evil arises every couple decades and the world must rally to push them back. But have we actually learned the lesson? When the great evil comes disguised as everything you’ve ever dreamed of, and looks like regular every day stuff, can you still see the wickedness beneath it?
I’ve been going back and forth with a friend about my inherent mistrust of billionaires. She thinks people cannot get angry at billionaires for making money because we all want to, but they’re just smart or savvy enough to actually do it. She also thinks we enable them. I don’t think they should exist. There’s something wrong to me, about hoarding more money than you can actually spend in a lifetime, to the point where you can single-handedly end world hunger but instead you choose to just not do that? I’m not saying people shouldn’t get wealthy, but I think we should be clear about what it takes to grow a company to the point where becoming a billionaire is possible.
Firstly, let’s be clear, half of these people inherited their wealth or the privilege that made accumulating the wealth possible, and many of them, I’d go as far as to say ALL OF THEM have done some shady things to get where they are. So far, our billionaires have been accused of stealing ideas from smaller more talented people and companies, using sweat shop labour, underpaying and overworking their employees and meddling in governance to avoid taxes. They’ve commandeered fresh water sources denying hundreds of thousands of people that commodity, they’ve invested in massive oil pipelines in sacred lands ignoring spills, and they’re complicit in using child labour to mine minerals for gadgets. Our billionaires, even the most philanthropic ones, the ones who donate to major causes and fund NGOs, the ones who have publicly defended democracy and people’s rights, behind the scenes they play the game of exploitation just like everyone else.
Source: ILLUSTRATION: DAMON DAHLEN/HUFFPOST; PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES
These people, even if not personally involved in this exploitative system, are willing to support its growth at the expense of the rest of the world. They are, in my mind at least, an existential threat to humanity, just as bad as climate change, pandemics or nuclear war. This isn’t speculation, these people have made their priorities known and they put their money and power where their mouths are. If we look at the decisions of the most powerful people in our world, their priorities are clear. The last wave of technology that saw the creation and rapid expansion of Google, Facebook and Amazon, has deeply deeply fractured the globe, deepening inequalities. Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO is on target to become a trillionaire in the next decade while his workers endure some of the harshest and most hostile working environments. Employees allege Google is now rolling back commitments to diversity to avoid alienating US conservatives and Facebook has been setting up advocacy groups to combat attempts to rein in the tech industry. Even Bill Gates for all his effort to solve global issues, still exerts an undue amount of influence over things no one person should have that much say in. One person one vote cannot be a reality when these people operate as if they have the most shares in the world order and thus get make decisions for the rest of us.
We are living the dystopia right now and I don’t know what to do about it. The spirit of capitalism has so deeply pervaded the whole world that even in my rural community I see its fingernails digging in and rotting the soil. I hear its scythe scraping the ground ready to reap. Eyes hungrily watching, fangs bared, teeth chomping at the bit to tear into our untapped beaches and miles and miles of forest to build luxury homes and high rise condos while public infrastructure can’t get any investments. It feels like everything is at risk of being torn away and eaten up in the jaws of this insatiable capitalism beast. Anything that can make money must make money, no matter the cost - but the cost is us. It’s humanity.
I’m just one person and I get overwhelmed at the sheer magnitude of this problem, but whatever little I can do, I continue to. In fact, I’m writing this on this rainy Thursday because since the beginning of Covid-19 my morale has been so low I’ve been on autopilot most days. But seeing my friends and thousands of people around the world continue to push back is making me think I can give myself some time to breathe, learn lessons from other people and from my own work and gather my strength for a second wind.
Who am I? What do I do? Why do I care? I’m Kristeena, one human with big dreams, from a tiny rock with lots of challenges. I use my voice, I help others use theirs and I support people who put people and the planet first. I put my energy, skill-set and money behind anything building human to human connections and addressing humanity’s issues. I study these organizations. I use my platforms to speak about their work. I’m devoted to virtual and physical civic infrastructure - places like community centers and libraries and podcasts and book clubs, that are dedicated to being places of sharing, information, equality and voice building.
I care because life is incredibly short, incredibly unfair and can be incredibly painful. We can’t control when disaster will strike or who will get sick or what accidents may happen. But even so, it is a tragedy that generations of people have no option but to spend their whole lives trying to survive. They are born and die without the time to breathe and marvel at this fantastical experience. How can we bear to make it harder for people to experience joy during their time above the earth and below the stars? We should be doing everything we can to guarantee each human can experience safety, fulfillment, love, kindness, support, friendship, wonder and amazement at the world. These things matter to me. It’s my deepest wish that when confronted with the opportunity to choose money, machines and empire, more of us will choose a warm hearth, a shared meal, a starlit sky and laughter. Choose humanity.