“I tend to think that most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism,” Chiang told me. “And I think that this is actually true of most fears of technology, too. Most of our fears or anxieties about technology are best understood as fears or anxiety about how capitalism will use technology against us. And technology and capitalism have been so closely intertwined that it’s hard to distinguish the two.”
Let me offer an addendum here: There is plenty to worry about when the state controls technology, too. The ends that governments could turn A.I. toward — and, in many cases, already have — make the blood run cold.
I might, for that reason, alter Chiang’s comment one more time: Most fears about capitalism are best understood as fears about our inability to regulate capitalism.
We Americans won't do anything do anything to constrain A.I. because Technocapitalism does not serve us, but we it. We Americans are worshippers in the cult of the Invisible Hand, and it is a jealous god that will have no other gods beside it. All our blessings derive from our being a Nation most servile to this god and so most favored by it. And we dare not risk angering it, for surely for such sacrilege we will be cast out of the Temple and be forever forsaken.