New Consensus AI Count me in

Nov. 7–8 · San Francisco

If Anyone Owns AI It Has to Be Everyone (and how about the rest of the economy too)

New Consensus AI brings together organizers, economists, engineers and policymakers to face AI’s real dangers — and to make the case for an economy the public runs, with AI working for us instead of putting us out of work.

Count me in

AI is emerging from the sum of all human recorded knowledge.

It is not being programmed by software developers. The code that folds human knowledge into silicon is incredibly simple. It has been implemented in as few as 100 lines. AI companies are not magic makers, they are book-scanners and human piecework managers. The magic lies in the human creation that is being harvested.

owned by oligarchs

Mass layoffs. Economic collapse.

AI wipes out old jobs and does the new ones too. Tax base disappears. Owners provide for themselves, workers no longer needed.

owned by everyone

Less work. Better life.

We run the economy on purpose to make a good living for all. Keep good work for ourselves. Give bad work to the machines.

It depends who owns it.

“Pause AI” may be a good political slogan, but there is no way to pause a technology as open and decentralized and adaptable as this. Some of the most powerful models were built with relatively small numbers of second-tier chips. To truly pause AI, governments would need to police what every company was doing on its computers. This leaves open the possibility that secretive rogue players will be the ones building the smartest models.

But even if we could pause AI, shouldn’t we be dreaming of a better world than what we have today? Humanity’s demand must be so much bigger than “Freeze.”

  • Pause AI, but keep the same exploitive and soul-eating economy?

  • Stop new fossil fuel plants, but keep heating and polluting the planet?

  • Stop nuclear weapons from spreading, but live with the risk of today’s arsenals?

AI IS dangerous.

If it is not owned by everyone, and controlled for the benefit of humanity, then we are adding yet another extinction threat to an already long list.

If humanity can build the political power to control AI globally, then we will have built the power to control all technology. We will have the power to use our technology to build a world that works for everyone.

Time to figure out these big questions:

  • Can capitalism survive without workers?
  • Can UBI work to keep capitalism alive?
  • Do we need capitalists if AI runs the enterprises they own?
  • If not, what do we replace capitalism with?
  • Is a publicly owned and operated economy possible?
  • Can we just run a mostly-automated economy to meet our needs, and decouple meeting needs from needing work?
  • What are the keys to making public ownership work?
  • What should humanity demand when the AI bubble bursts instead of bailouts?
  • What will it mean to be human when humans are no longer needed for work?
  • Are we sure we want to reserve work for humans? Is work so great?