By George Ford Smith

There’s an argument running through the commentariat that goes something like this: AI (artificial intelligence) has already rendered some jobs obsolete and will continue this trend until the human race is unemployed. Even now it surpasses the ability of most people to write an effective opinion essay because it can create logic-driven, elegant compositions in seconds. Since government schools turn out illiterates, people will depend on AI commentaries for intellectual expression. Combined with research functions that are allegedly dependent on flawed databases, leading users to accept falsehoods in areas such as medicine, government, and economic theory, it renders them easy prey for a program of complete statism, such as socialism.

Why socialism? Because socialists promise to care for the downtrodden, which will be every person left alive when AI achieves full robustness. AI in the hands of a socialist government will feed and house them, and will, of course, see that it’s done equitably. This leaves libertarians and conservatives with the urgent need to stop AI in its tracks now, while they still can.

The idea of AI overtaking humanity has a distinguished pedigree. The website PauseAI presents quotes from leaders in their fields about the dangers of runaway AI:

Physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking had warned that, “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race… It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate.”

Elon Musk—who is developing his own AI called Grokipedia—said, “AI is a rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation than be reactive. I think that [digital super intelligence] is the single biggest existential crisis that we face and the most pressing one.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates........

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