Open Source Is Out

Blair Fix makes an excellent post in his latest post: competence is not intelligence.^∇ Intelligence is what comes to us as conscious thought. Digesting food, going to the bathroom. That is competence, but we don’t know how we do it. It just happens. We will know exactly now it works one day, but we have been doing for a long time without knowing how it happens.

It isn’t Artificial Intelligence that is going to eliminate humanity. The high risk for us is the enclosures of Artificial Competence technology, tools.

If the Musks and Altmans of this world have it their way, their businesses will be among the handful who will be allowed to build Artificial Competence tools. Smaller companies will have to take a lot of Fiat investment to get over the regulatory hump or stay out of that business altogether.

Open Source Software (OSS) will be out of it for good.

The Real Risk

These enclosures are the real risk. And it is not the fact that somebody will be making more money our out of it. The real risk is that by virtue of their capital investments they will getting more power. As investors they will be doing their own “regulation.”

A few people will be slotted into the privileged category of “AI wizards” and be paid a “more than reasonable” amount, enough to make them believe they a cut above. Everybody else will live off handouts from the 21c Robber Barons. This means that the Fiat system and the oligarchic owners will continue to thrive and the possibility of non-Fiat systems and co-ownership will be slowed down.

Enclosure-by-Regulation

The piece by Blair Fix is entitled, No, AI Does Not Pose an Existential Risk to Humanity. The 21c Robber Barons are pushing hard for an enclosure-by-regulation moat around their businesses.