AI utopian propaganda reaches fever pitch

The US Department of State has announced a new partnership with Amazon, Anthropic, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI, in which they will collectively commit $100 million to making things better for poor countries. Isn’t that nice? It’s called the Partnership for Global Inclusivity on AI.

“This effort recognizes that effective and equitable AI solutions must be rooted in an understanding and respect for the diverse cultures, languages, and traditions of the communities they serve,” says the press release. “To this end, the PGIAI will focus on three areas: 1) Compute: increasing access to AI models, compute credit, and other AI tools; 2) Capacity: building human technical capacity; and 3) Context: expanding local datasets.”

It's great that the US state and all these tech giants are devoting this small fraction of their time and resources to good causes. Any resulting expansion of US global influence and control over AI, not to mention the seeding of new markets for the companies involved, will be purely coincidental and the least they deserve for their heart-warming philanthropy. In the name of inclusivity, the US has also taken the trouble to publish the Global AI Research Agenda and the AI in Global Development Playbook, so everyone knows the AI rules.

Nvidia, which you can see being inclusive in the above image, published its own press release on the matter. “Artificial Intelligence is driving the next industrial revolution, offering incredible potential to contribute meaningful progress on sustainable development goals,” said Ned Finkle, VP of Nvidia government affairs. “Nvidia is committed to empowering communities to use AI to innovate through support for research, education and small and medium size enterprises.”

Coincidentally the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, chose the very same day to publish a piece titled ‘The Intelligence Age’, which paints a picture of an AI-run future in which everything is much, much better. “Eventually we can each have a personal AI team, full of virtual experts in different areas, working together to create almost anything we can imagine,” wrote Altman.

“Our children will have virtual tutors who can provide personalized instruction in any subject, in any language, and at whatever pace they need. We can imagine similar ideas for better healthcare, the ability to create any kind of software someone can imagine, and much more. With these new abilities, we can have shared prosperity to a degree that seems unimaginable today; in the future, everyone’s lives can be better than anyone’s life is now.”

Sounds brilliant, doesn’t it? Anticipating the odd remaining Luddite sceptic, Altman doubled down. “I believe the future is going to be so bright that no one can do it justice by trying to write about it now; a defining characteristic of the Intelligence Age will be massive prosperity,” he persisted.

“Although it will happen incrementally, astounding triumphs – fixing the climate, establishing a space colony, and the discovery of all of physics – will eventually become commonplace. With nearly-limitless intelligence and abundant energy – the ability to generate great ideas, and the ability to make them happen – we can do quite a lot.”

The only thing standing between our current grubby, pedestrian existences and this AI paradise, were told, is a dramatic reduction in the cost of the chips that do all this AI processing, something PGIAI partner Nvidia may have a different perspective on. Then there’s the small matter of abundant energy at a time when the West is obsessed with arbitrary green targets, a conundrum AI is doubtless currently in the process of resolving.

More immediately, legacy Big Tech player HP has published its Work Relationship Index, which explains that workers who use AI are 11 percentage points happier with their relationship with work than their colleagues who don't.

“We know employer and employee expectations have evolved and we believe smart technology is key to meeting the needs of today’s workforce,” said Enrique Lores, CEO of HP. “The future of work will be unlocked by using the power of AI to create solutions and experiences that drive business growth and enable individuals to achieve personal and professional fulfillment.”

Altman, who reckons ‘superintelligence’ may just be a few thousand days away, used a reassuringly analogue impressionist landscape at the top of his piece, which may or may not have been AI-generated. Meanwhile his X bio simply says "AI is cool i guess". But this deluge of powerful people constantly emphasising the upsides of AI, while also stressing their own philanthropic motives, feels an attempt as gaslighting.

In its coverage of Alman’s piece TechCrunch used the following quote from a tech forum: “I’m not an AI skeptic at all, I use LLMs all the time, and find them very useful. But stuff like this makes me very skeptical of the people who are making and selling AI.” The more we hear about the unprecedented power and impact AI will have, the more wary we should be about those who seek to control it. The current frontrunner for that role is an ominous alliance of Big Tech and the US state.