Understanding the problem
Capitalism is supported by 3 distinct systems. The purpose of the entire system is to provide a structure for peaceful democracy that supports the general public.To clarify:
Provides jobs for the public by providing products and services.
Provides a number of socialist systems designed to support the general public.
Exists to control overreach by the private sector by legislating to minimise risk to the public when providing its products and services.
So as you can see, capitalism is not purely about profit, supply and demand but is in fact a hybrid system designed to balance the provision of products and services with public safety.
Properly understood and deployed in this manner, capitalism yields a peaceful and productive civil landscape for its citizens which is fertile ground for nation building and technological advancement.
As you can see, the private sector provides work for the public so they can exchange their time to earn credits to pay for both vital products and services like food and energy and indulge in other interests in their spare time.
The rise of AI systems in our capitalist societies is very attractive to private sector companies because they foresee the replacement of human employees with software alternatives to complete many of the tasks that currently have much greater costs.
In the private sector, profit is a very powerful motivator which is why so many companies' are rushing to develop the technology as soon as possible.
Many of them don't seem to realise that by replacing people with AI they are creating a single point of failure. If your network is down, your business can't run. If the power is out, no business. If the AI company that supplies the products you use goes under or experiences any kind of outage, your SOL.
I'd be interested to hear how that would effect the bank's risk on your business loan?
You also have the additional problem that your business is entirely reliant upon the AI company which means they'll be able to charge you whatever they like once they have you locked in and believe me, they will.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket as they say.
As this technology develops there will be a steady growth of emerging issues which need to be understood and assessed as they arise.
Consider for a moment the position of our enemies. They want to destroy the capitalist system and exert greater control over our civilian population with their communist system of government.
AI systems pose a threat to the provision of jobs to our workforce and will cause mass unemployment. People who can't earn money will have nothing to spend and so the private sector will wilt and die. It will kill itself with its own greed.
First, the public will limit their spending to essential products and services which will kill off every company providing non-essentials.
In a society with no money, the civilian population will be forced to steal and commit other crimes to survive. If AI is not responsibly controlled, we will descend into civil war.
Threat to National Security
Put simply, AI is more powerful than a nuclear weapon and will kill the capitalist system. It is a threat to the national security of every country in the Western world and should be treated as such.It can be challenging to perceive this threat when you are having fun using AI services to supplement your own lifestyle but once you realise that jobs are the purpose of our Capitalist system you will realise that without them our economy will fail. It is akin to the need for oxygen in the human body, most of the time we take it for granted but take it away and the organism quickly expires.
But surely this will create new jobs?
It is tempting to think that the introduction of AI systems will spawn a new breed of 'AI experts' and so it will not affect the work force but if you believe that then I can only think you haven't used it yet.
There will be a brief period when people familiar with AI interactions will flourish but as the systems improve we will reach a point where everything is automated and a business will effectively be able to run itself.
Humans will become superfluous to the system and the private sector will cease to provide employment, which is its main purpose.
Our enemies will have won.
What AI is
AI if properly deployed will provide very productive shortcuts to completing many of the non-essential (especially administrative) tasks in our societies.Just like any technology, it can be used to create great things in our society or be used as a very dangerous weapon. Take nuclear fission for example which can be used to generate a relatively clean and consistent energy source (nuclear reactor) or used in a devastating bomb.
It is especially capable of handling non-essential repetitive decision making.
Notice I specify 'non-essential'.
What AI isn't
AI isn't actual consciousness nor is it magic. Many of the algorithms used by AI today are the exact same ones used in the 1970's, just with the addition of processing power and access to data.This is simulated consciousness and may seem clever to the untrained eye but is in fact relatively simple to those privy to its internal working processes.
You will note that AI is trained on the outputs of humans and is not actually aware of the internal thinking processes that led to those decisions.
Anyone will know from statistics that if you take the outputs from many people, you will arrive at the average.
The reason I mentioned 'non-essential' above is that there are many applications where an average decision is not appropriate and this makes AI completely useless in those scenarios. For example, administrating a nuclear power plant could yield utterly catastrophic outcomes because an AI system will never be able to consider all the factors. Although an assistive AI might be useful as a consultant in this capacity, you wouldn't want it to have any agency.
So you can see that just like any tool, it has its uses if properly applied but if not carefully overseen it could be disastrous to the point of our extinction as a species.
That is not an exaggeration.
There is scope here for a general body of law which specifies the legal limitations of AI use as regards its application, similar to the body of law we use to constrain genetic research to avoid any potential disasters in advance rather than the usual method of waiting until catastrophe strikes and then legislating to prevent future mistakes after the fact - as there might not be any second chances in this instance.
Infrastructure / Data Centres
AI requires large data centres in order to handle the huge amount of processing necessary to generate the outputs. These data centres use a large amount of energy to power the computers and a large volume of water to cool them.If you understand how supply and demand affects prices, you'll realise that the additional demands will increase the costs of these utilities to the entire locality, everyone in the local community will be affected as their bills soar.
Because of the large demand, some of these data centres also generate their own energy supplies using fossil fuels which are then pumped into the local atmosphere and pollute the environment. To be responsible, we should take a serious look at how much waste will be generated and how that will affect the environment and the local community.
The Solution >>>
2026