Age of AI Ushers Exponential And Transformational Power In The Hands Of A Few

Society has often swung from centralization to decentralization and back in the distribution of power and rights.  Living in a culture of abundance versus a culture of scarcity can alter the prioritization of decisions, the quality of interactions, and the overall optimism or pessimism of a society.  AI has the power to transform societies for both good and evil.

Take the climate agenda. For the most part, the messages have focused on authoritarian control.  People are told they can't eat meat, they need ot use less water, they have to stop traveling long distances, they need to get rid of their gas stove, they shouldn't do this and that.  Centralized scarcity allows for massive authoritarian control.  However, the objectives of a more efficient and green society could just as easily be achieved with decentralized abundance.  In Tesla's Q1 2023 Investor Day, Elon Musk showed how less than .2% of the world's land area, 240 TW/h, and less than 10% of the world's GDP could be used to create sustainable and abundant energy. Over 10 years, this would require 1% of the world's global GDP to achieve this sustainable energy goal.  Humanity ultimately innovates better with decentralized abundance.  The goal is to create win-win-wins across the board.

Bottom Line: Free Societies Must Define Their Digital Rights Before Its Too Late

The rapid digitization of the physical world brings more centralized control in the hands of the few.  Many of the global elite see AI as an opportunity to impress their values at scale without checks and balances and rigorous public discourse.  Those who seek decentralized abundance, will have to work hard to battle the elites who seek centralized scarcity.

Free societies will have to modernize their rights and privileges for a digital age and for an age of AI.  Freedom is at stake and humanity could face a dark ages without having these basic digital rights codified ahead of mass AI adoption. For countries such as the US, there is time to create a new constitutional convention codifying a digital rights built for the Age of AI.  By defining your genomics, your personal data, and your digital footprint as a property right, this first step could provide a key protection in privacy.  Other rights will preserve right that allow humans to operate at human scale in an ever growing machine scale world.