Copyright 1999 by Donald R. Tveter, http://www.dontveter.com, commercial use is prohibited. This material cannot be quoted at length or posted elsewhere on the net or included in CD ROM collections. Short quotations are permitted provided proper attribution is given.

If the AI is believed to somehow not be the equivalent of a human being then it will be treated as a tool, something to be owned and used as a slave. In my opinion using robots as slaves will only end up hurting society, people will become lazy and stupid. People actually have to do things for themselves in order to have self-esteem and they actually have to do things for other people in order to find meaning and purpose in life.

If the AI is truly believed to be equivalent to a human being then it will have to be as free as any human being. Humans will end up ignoring its opinions in the same way that people today ignore the opinions of other people whether those people are considered to be smart or dumb.

You can be sure that people will end up fighting about whether or not the robots are equivalent to human beings and should be free or not equivalent to human beings and should be regarded as tools. So we'll have yet more division and strife within human society.

Some people believe that real artificial intelligence will issue in a golden age of peace and prosperity. In my opinion this is nonsense. In my opinion techies who believe that the widespread availability of artificial intelligence will lead to a golden age are so rational they don't (and even can't) understand human psychology. For instance, if the World's Greatest Artificial Intelligence decides the answer to improving the economy is to raise taxes, conservatives will not go along. If the World's Greatest Artificial Intelligence decides the answer to improving the economy is to cut taxes then liberals will not go along. If it decides a certain piece of land in the Middle East should belong to the Jews the Arabs will not go along and if it decides that land should belong to the Arabs the Jews will not go along. The opinion of the World's Greatest AI will mean nothing in every case that comes up. So what kind of influence will it have? Maybe techies will worship the World's Greatest AI for a while but eventually The World's Greatest AI will make decisions that offend them too and even they will give up following its advice. The world's worst problems all come from bad behavior by people and these days people can't even agree on what is good behavior and what is bad behavior. No amount of technology can make up for that.