“By 2040, AI will extend into virtually every digitally-enabled technology we interact with; it will be woven into the very infrastructure that surrounds and supports us in the 21st century. The effects will be a mix of the astonishing, the appalling and the invisible.
The danger of a very few humans controlling AI is much greater than the science-fictional nightmare of AI controlling vast numbers of humans.
“If we leave all aspects of the AIs’ deployment, control, displacement and profit-production to their inventors and exploiters – as we have been up to now – and do not exercise communal, civic and even constitutional guidelines and controls over these technologies, we will be at even greater risk of oligarchic control.
“The danger of a very few humans controlling AI is much greater than the science-fictional nightmare of AI controlling vast numbers of humans. In 2040, just as today, how humans relate to other humans and how they regulate the distribution of power and powerful tools – like AI – will be the primary determinant of how AI impacts its human hosts.”
This was written in November 2023 in reply to the question: Considering likely changes due to the proliferation of AI in individuals’ lives and in social, economic and political systems, how will life have changed by 2040? This and more than 150 additional responses are included in the report “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence by 2040”