<story><title>The AI Threat to Open Societies</title><url>https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-the-world-economic-forum-2/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>raz32dust</author><text>This reminds me of the &amp;quot;Do artifacts have politics&amp;quot; paper by Langdon Winner [1]. He argues that technologies have inherent political traits.&lt;p&gt;Nuclear power is considered to be supportive of autocratic political systems since nuclear power plants need centralized planning and networks to be effective. Solar power is considered democratic since anyone can harness it. It&amp;#x27;s an interesting paper and definitely worth a read.&lt;p&gt;On similar lines, I feel internet is a democratizing force, since it allowed anyone to publish data and anyone to consume it, and is (somewhat) difficult to control centrally. AI, on the other hand, is a centralizing force, since the most powerful AI can be managed and powered by the most powerful institutions.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cc.gatech.edu&amp;#x2F;~beki&amp;#x2F;cs4001&amp;#x2F;Winner.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cc.gatech.edu&amp;#x2F;~beki&amp;#x2F;cs4001&amp;#x2F;Winner.pdf&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The AI Threat to Open Societies</title><url>https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-the-world-economic-forum-2/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Animats</author><text>AI is only in a supporting role here. It&amp;#x27;s massive data collection and storage at low cost that&amp;#x27;s the problem. Machine learning just helps to digest the data.&lt;p&gt;Tech has solved the problem of previous attempts at Big Brother - you just couldn&amp;#x27;t afford enough watchers to watch everybody all the time. Now, you can. It&amp;#x27;s even profitable.</text></comment>