AI and robotics will transform the world and will bring unimaginable changes to the global economy, politics, warfare, foreign policy, emotional well-being, environment, and how we educate and raise our children. Through his report presented to Congress a few months back, on AI, US Senator Bernie Sanders has unboxed a sour issue.
The report is no science fiction but is drawn on verified data and candid words of the very people driving this revolution. The fundamental issue raised in this report is the absence of a regulatory mechanism. It highlights that a handful of the world’s wealthiest corporate bigwigs are collectively injecting billions of dollars into AI and robotics, with virtually no oversight regime put in place.
Going by their record of public statements, accountability in this regard seems to be nowhere or very low on the agenda. The Trump administration has moved to prevent individual states from even trying to regulate on their own. From the fundamental issue of the absence of a regulatory mechanism stems the overarching question: why must alarm bells not ring when technology magnates actively resist any checks on their power?
A handful of the world’s wealthiest corporate bigwigs are collectively injecting billions of dollars into AI and robotics, with virtually no oversight regime put in place.
They must, on various accounts. Let us take on the economic consequences which are laid out in the report. They are, in fact, staggering. AI automation and robotics could displace billions of jobs like nurses, truck drivers, accountants, teachers’ aides, and fast food workers worldwide within the next decade.
If even a fraction of this prediction proves accurate, the social fallout is likely to be immense. And yet there are no serious global plans, no safety net that is being redesigned, no retraining infrastructure being built to absorb that shock. The technology is outpacing policy-making by machine. That is more directed towards developed countries; imagine how third-world countries like Pakistan can be impacted.
Beyond the economy lies a more insidious threat: the slow erosion of social liberties itself. Larry Ellison, the second-richest person on the planet and a major AI investor, has described his vision of an AI-powered surveillance state in which citizens behave well because everything they do is being constantly recorded and reported. Read that again, one of the primary architects of the AI future has explicitly imagined a world of total monitoring and framed it as a feature, not a flaw. A true democracy cannot survive mass surveillance.
Yes, it holds good only for societies which are democratic in essence. Dissent, organising, and political opposition all of it becomes impossible when every communication is potentially available to those who hold the technology. The report instils a threat (which then becomes increasingly known) of AI concentrating surveillance power in a few hands.
There is also a quieter crisis brewing that doesn’t make the economic headlines but may prove just as consequential: the social crisis. As a snapshot of different societies of what is to come, a recent media survey of American teenagers shows 72% of them turning to AI for companionship, with more than half doing so regularly. It implies that a generation is already being raised that is learning to relate to machines rather than to each other, distorting human identity, characterised by empathy, conflict and growth, which otherwise are inbuilt in interpersonal relationships. What is the impact when the primary relationship is with an algorithm, a question which is yet to be answered.
Then comes the environmental cost, purposely left out of the glossy AI narratives. The data centres powering AI are energy and water gluttons on a scale that is difficult to comprehend. A single mid-sized centre can consume more electricity than 80,000 homes. OpenAI and Oracle are constructing a facility in Texas with the energy footprint of 750,000 homes. Meta’s planned Louisiana Data Centre is the size of Manhattan and would consume power equivalent to 1.2 million homes. In communities across America, residents are already pushing back against the noise, water depletion and the soaring utility bills of these facilities. AI accelerating climate change while promising to improve human life is self-contradictory in essence and demands an honest inquest.
Perhaps the most underrated dimension of the AI revolution is the military one. Historically, the human cost of war, the soldiers killed, families destroyed, and the public grief, have dampened the ambitions of even the most hawkish leaders. Now, when wars are to be fought by robot armies, the political cost of conflicts is liable to be determined not in terms of loss of human lives, but in terms of hardware. The report raises the genuine possibility of an international arms race in autonomous military technology where nations compete to feed the largest and most lethal robot forces, and that does not seem to be a distant scenario. Several governments are already investing heavily in it. Without an international framework to govern autonomous weapons, it is likely to lead to irreversible fallout.
Unlike most public conversations that shy away from it, this report boldly confronts the biggest question of all: Will AI eventually take control away from humanity? Researchers claim that it only seems to be a matter of time before artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence. The safeguards today to ensure AI stays under human control are minimal. The Sander’s report does not claim to have all the answers, but what makes it valuable is that it insists on questioning before the outcomes; who governs this technology, what are its costs, who reaps its benefits and what are the limits, take shape. The questions it raises are, in fact, less technical and more political and moral in nature, as the answers to these surely belong to the public life domain. The billionaires funding the AI revolution may prefer a world in which ordinary people stay alienated, giving us a peek into whose interests are being served. The vehicle is running at full speed down the freeway. The least we can do is to demand a neutral hand on the wheel for control.
The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at [email protected]