The Transformation of the Democracy into Dictatorship with Ai

The statement in and of itself is a truth that mots people aren’t aware of, it just sounds crazy to many people that liberal democracy is doomed and, if we don’t take any action it will be replaced by some sort of data dictatorship. Today, very few people understand that what’s going on at the root of democracy. Whether the government is ruling us, or these giant tech companies holds the power, for the majority of people the term fascism (fascism tells you that your nation is supreme, and you have exclusive obligations towards it. Your nation is at the top.

Everything else (even your family) is secondary.) and dictatorship aren’t practical in their society(And there are few exceptions) but overall if you dig deep and try to connect the dots you will get to know where power lies and will understand that whoever controls artificial intelligence will rule the world in this century. Through this reflection paper, I will cover some of the most untouched issues like “The source of power and control of 21st Century”, “Who controls the data, who governs us”, and the most misinterpreted concept that “The conflict between democracy and dictatorship is actually a conflict between two different data processing systems” and more.

The Source of Power and Control of 21st Century

As beautifully said by Vladimir Putin “Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind” “It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.” In the 20th century, fascism was defeated by democracy and capitalism because at that time it was basically futile to focus too much data and power on just one place, and thus due to technological limitations decentralization was the way to go. Although, with the advent of Artificial intelligence and the mere fact that the data is the most precious asset of 21st century, the trend is shifting dramatically. Today centralization is the key to power, as whoever processes more data will have an upper hand in controlling people at emotional, subconscious level and thus giving rise to dictatorship which concentrates information and power at one place.

And these problems are going to surge when information technology and biotechnology merges. That will when the puppet show begins, because that’s what is going to happen when an algorithm knows you better than you know yourself. It can literally tap into your right emotional chord and change your thoughts without you even being aware of it. Gradually, Fascism and Dictatorship is coming back but not in the form we have known for years but in the new form, A form that’s suitable for today’s technological scenario and that’s why most people are not able to recognize it, However whatever made our democracies worked in the past are based on 100 years old rules which are outdated, so it’s natural evolution in the eyes of everyone thus nobody is looking at the negative side of it.

Hacking Humans

We can rebel against data dictatorship in the future, but this is going to be very tricky because once they get to your emotional level and are able to hack your emotions without you even noticing it, then there is no chance of people protesting the system. It’s just like spotting a liar through his body language, tech companies today just rely on predictability with our digital footprints but what if in the near future they have 100% accuracy on our behavior? This may lead you to say things that you don’t believe, just because someone else put the thought there.

For example, OpenAI (the artificial intelligence research company founded by Elon Musk), a non-profit that makes technology accessible to the public got so scared when they realized the scope of what they’ve found, that they don’t want to make it available to the public. Because a system like this in wrong hands would be the ultimate tool to spread really effective propaganda, now the question arises “What if government is already using these kind of systems” and if they are using such things then “What happens to the liberal democracy” and that’s the precise conversation we should be having to make people aware about the scenario.

Who Controls the Data, Who Governs Us

When it comes to politics, the key question’s always been: Who has the power? But if we translate this question to today’s standard, the right question to ask is: Who controls data? Today corporations have lot of data so are they the ones in control or our government controlling our data? Do they have the power we think they do? It’s all depends on how we define government role, if we look at the root of what corporations and government do, we would realize that there is not much difference between them as what they do is influence public interest regardless whether it is done in public or private sector. In the end, whoever that has control over data, and influence public policy, that’s the real government, even though we might not see them that way. It looks like these tech companies are turning into some sort of global government and other things to consider here is the fact that they are operating from specific locations in the world thus few people are imposing their vision on rest of the world.

I know we are still far from this reality but we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future but the evidences are such which makes me think that we might deal with hordes of bots that know how to press our emotional buttons better than our mother does and that use this uncanny ability, to try to sell us something—be it a car, a politician, or an entire ideology. The bots might identify our deepest fears, hatreds, and cravings and use them against us. Although, the technology evolution is inevitable but what we can do on our end is to find ways to keep distributed data processing more efficient than centralized data processing, it will not be easy but that’s how we can safeguard our democracy.